Naval Legends: Cinemarathon

they were designed to be the best they met enemies face to face endured tragedies and enjoyed victories they went down in history due to the bravery of their crews they are the ships that deserve to be called naval legends in this episode battleship Iowa a trump card that was never played in the 1930s the whole world was crazy about two things swing music and guns the passion that politicians and industrial moguls show to the latter had all the signs of giganto mania by finding legal loopholes in international arms control treaties and conventions or simply ignoring them countries were constantly building new and unprecedented weapon systems for both land and sea they were becoming bigger heavier and more powerful the global arms race involve the most advanced technologies of the time and huge financial resources in order to compete with any of our potential enemies it was felt necessary to increase the size of our ships so the Iowa was 45,000 ton battleship the prior ships had been less the South Dakota class and the North Carolina class a battleship is basically a floating artillery battery so her size directly depends on the size of her primary guns the 16 inch main batteries on battleship Iowa of which there are 3-3 turrets each turret has three guns is everything about the ship design is is is structured around becoming being a platform for the 16-inch box it's like small arms there is a common misbelief that the pistol is designed first and then the cartridge no the defense ministry always orders the cartridge the same for ships the enemy is 380 millimeters and 305 millimeters let's make 406 millimeters because we already have some of the technologies but let's not make it 40 but 50 calibers long and they made a 406 millimeter gun so the ship was built to carry this particular gun key specifications of battleship Iowa total displacement fifty seven thousand five hundred and forty tons length 270 point five meters being 33 meters draft eleven meters armament primary armament nine mark 7 guns in three triple turrets caliber four hundred six millimeters maximum range 39 kilometers dual purpose artillery twenty mark 12 guns and ten coaxial mark 28 turrets caliber 127 millimetres anti-aircraft armament 19 quadruple bofors guns 5200 lykan mark two three four autocannons Air Group three vort OS to you Kingfisher floatplanes during construction Iowa's armor was declared higher than it actually was in order to mislead the enemy the real specifications are as follows main belt 307 millimeters main turrets one hundred and eighty four to four hundred and thirty two millimeters conning tower one hundred and eighty four to four hundred and forty millimeters main armored deck 153 to 179 millimeters Iowa has the most powerful powerplant among battleships for geared turbine engines with eight turbines produced by General Electric eight boilers produced by Babcock and Wilcox power two hundred and twelve thousand horsepower maximum speed about 33 knots cruising range about 20,000 nautical miles at a speed of 15 knots battleship Iowa had a very unique hull design in the bull nose and and you can also see that her lines were very tapered almost aerodynamic and that's all part and parcel of how they got this 57,000 ton behemoth up to a speed of 33 knots which is very very fast and almost you could you could say it's almost powerboat speed you know very very unusual for a warship this became an important advantage later on during the war in the Pacific Theater with a speed like that Iowa could efficiently escort carrier task forces they put about a hundred and forty 20 millimeter and 40 millimeter anti-aircraft guns on the ship and the carrier's love them because they were able to protect the carrier when Iowa was still under construction the Americans realized that she would play a secondary role in battles against the Japanese fleet aircraft carriers were becoming the main striking force of the Navy but a Giants like Iowa played a worthy role in the world war ii battleship Iowa was commissioned in early 1943 its first mission was to go north naval intelligence felt the Tirpitz the German battleship may be coming into the North Atlantic the [Music] battleship Iowa was sent on an early mission north to block the Tirpitz [Music] supposed battleships Iowa and Tirpitz met in battle Iowa had a higher speed greater maneuverability and longer range of fire Tippit's will be trying to get in close to Iowa and Iowa would be looking to keep away you nuvaring and firing at Tirpitz from a great distance Iowa would have definitely won this battle [Music] but the two naval heavyweight warriors never met so we can only imagine how their duel would have ended [Music] then on their second mission in October 12th of 1943 was to accompany or I should say carry Franklin Roosevelt across the Atlantic to North Africa from there he went on to visit with Churchill and Stalin in the Tehran conference Roosevelt was on board the ship for 15 days when President Roosevelt came on board the first thing he saw was Vicky now the first captain Captain John McCrae brought little dog home Monday and his wife looked at the dog and said get that thing out of here so the captain McCrae took the dog and brought him on the ship and President Roosevelt asked who is this little dog and captain McCrae said well that's our little ship's mascot named Vicky so Vicky spent the whole 15 days of the Roosevelt passage in the cabin with Rosabelle he would roll a played tricks well he wasn't very good as a sailor he was very good as a dog and Roosevelt really enjoyed Vicky [Music] in early 1944 battleship Iowa joined the United States v fleet which operated in the Pacific Ocean by that time US forces were already attacking Japanese positions on various islands the battleships robe was to provide fire support to landing troops and to score two aircraft carriers during air raids of the Philippines the ruko islands and taiwan the ship criss crossing across a lot of these small islands that are really forgotten now at one point they went up to support MacArthur's landing in the Philippines at Leyte Gulf unfortunately they went the wrong way at Leyte Gulf and chased a Japanese carrier force that was really a decoy for the landing they came back but a little too late to assist in the Battle of Leyte Gulf they missed that one opportunity to maybe had a contact with the Yamato the two ships never met in combat and both countries kept their capital battleships shall we say arm's length kept them a distance because there was great political risk to having either one of the ships damaged severely in battle [Music] Japanese industry in those days simply didn't have the resources to those ships in large numbers the solution was simple to make huge ships that would exceed the largest ships of other nations super battleships battleship yamato is the biggest battleship in the world her shell velocity was 790 m/s while its weight could be up to 1.5 tons such a large gun could inflict very serious damage they Venus the Japanese essentially broke the treaty on the other side the United States of America was simply building a ship that met the contemporary requirements of naval warfare and could easily without any extra effort to be built by the American industry during the war the Japanese fleet could afford to build only two battleships while the Americans were able to construct more and more new battleships [Music] the Americans were simply building another ship and she turned out to be a good one [Music] the Iowa I think what of course I would probably say this would have taken the day in a battle against the Yamato she had very accurate fire control for a ship of the 1940s and I think that would be a good vantage for her if they should find such a battery it was so accurate that in 1984 when they recommissioned the ship they kept the existing system in place they did even though they had modern computers the Iowa could put around very very close to the target so accurate that they didn't need to change are you okey I'm at the same time doctor significant Iowa was the most dangerous enemy for a Yamato if they had met at a range from 20,000 to 30,000 meters especially in a one-on-one fight and in fine weather Iowa would have no chance of winning however thanks to better radar Iowa could fight in bad weather and at night putting new powerful guns high speed and precise radar made Iowa a formidable adversary if these two battleships had fought each other the victory would depend completely on the battle conditions we could get in quick and fire but then there's always the lucky shot [Music] [Music] the changing tactics of naval warfare increased the role of aircraft carriers and deprived Iowa of a chance to use its primary armament against surface ships so the battleship used its firepower against the enemy's coastal positions on August the 29th 1945 when the war was virtually over Iowa stood side by side with her sister ship Missouri and entered the Tokyo Bay as part of the occupation force we were next to our sister ship the Missouri and the Missouri of courses where Douglas MacArthur accepted the final surrender of the Japanese now we like to say on the Iowa that had Roosevelt lived that signing might have been on the Iowa because he had been on the ship but President Truman was from the state of Missouri and and so the but the signing was on the Missouri some of our set a sailor that was on that trip once told me that I asked him if he was sad that he didn't get the signing instead of the Missouri and he said no not really he said the war was over we had lived we were going home to our wives and children and all the guys on the Missouri were busy preparing a photo opportunity for Douglass apartment [Music] at the end of the war we brought back a large number of American POWs prisoner Japanese prisoners of the war and we brought them home and sailed through the Golden Gate Bridge and the war was over [Music] [Music] for her service in World War two the battleship was decorated with nine battle stars in 1949 Iowa was decommissioned into the reserve fleet but two years later she was recommissioned and sent on a mission to the coast of Korea the battleship returned home with two more battle stars from 1958 to 1984 Iowa was kept in reserve and after modernization she returned to active service again however the event that took place in the late 1980s showed that battleships can also sustain losses outside of wartime on April 19th 1989 the biggest tragedy that ever struck this ship occurred the ship was about 400 miles or so north berto Rico as I understand it they had loaded the shell in the number-two turret brand in the powder and they were about to close the breach when some when something happened there was an explosion that killed 47 men this by far the biggest lost life on the ship [Music] [Applause] having recovered from the tragedy the battleship returned home and joined the reserve fleet in 2001 58 years since our launched by the New York Naval Shipyard after she had crossed tens of thousands of miles and fired thousands of shells at the enemy's battleship Iowa was birthed in the Port of Los Angeles [Music] she's unique because she did have three careers in the Navy World War two Korea and the 1980s and then now she's on her fourth career as a museum chef [Music] [Music] you can activate your bonus code up to April 27 don't panic stay with us and don't forget to subscribe as there are more bonus codes to come have a lovely time fair winds and following seas [Music] at the beginning of the 20th century the Russian Navy experienced a series of shocks that brought it to its knees the first significant hit came with the Russell Japanese war when the Russian Empire lost almost all of its big ships then World War one the Russian Revolution of 1917 and the bloody civil war that followed destroyed both the Empire and its Navy [Music] nevertheless the Bolsheviks look to the future with optimism when they started building the new socialist state they saw a future in which the mightiest ships in the world Soviet ships would sail on the high seas protecting the peace and prosperity of the Soviet Union [Music] [Applause] [Music] in 1927 with the threat of war in the past and diplomatic relations with Great Britain broken it became obvious that the Soviet Union couldn't repel an attack even if it came from neighboring Poland and Romania for this reason in 1928 the state approved a program for the first five-year plans these resulted in the development of their heavy industry particularly the metallurgy industry which enabled the start of military construction and the development of the Armed Forces so the state approved the program for building large capital ships within the framework developing the Armed Forces and military construction the program of large shipbuilding adopted in 1936 presupposed that in the following 10 years it would introduce around 530 ships of the primary types into service with a total displacement of more than 1.3 million tons battleships were planned to have comprised half of that tonnage the funniest part of this was that not a single great country in the world out of their potential enemies considered the Soviet Union as an enemy they might battle at sea that's why they were completely indifferent to anything that the Soviet Union planned to construct moreover one shouldn't forget that the Soviet state was absolutely closed everyone was under suspicion everything was top-secret that's why the countries of the West didn't even suspect that we were planning or building anything Soviet shipbuilders based their knowledge of how a battleship of that era was supposed to be on the characteristics of the new heavy ships being built by leading sea States in the mid 1930s in February in 1936 the requirement specifications for designing a Baltic Sea battleship project 21 and a Pacific Ocean battleship project 23 were formulated after revisions of the technical requirements specification of project 23 it was named as a type a battleship in the spring of 1937 when officials of the Soviet Union learnt that the Japanese and Germans had started building battleships with a minimum displacement of 50,000 tons the Ministry of the shipbuilding industry suggested that the design bureau should rework the project without any limitations in a period of three months in November 1937 front 823 received its third revision after 18 months its final requirements specification were approved and by that time two ships were already under construction the ship should have been built in series four battleships at a time the keel of flagship Savitsky soyuz was laid down in leningrad the halls of Savitz kiyaah gracia and svet scoyoc peligrosa were laid down in molotovs which is now called several twins and another the hall of subotica ukraine a' in Nikolov [Music] performance characteristics of project 23 battleship 1939 Lentz almost 270 meters width almost 39 meters draft 10.45 meters full displacement 65,000 150 tons armored primary armor belt 375 to 400 and 20 millimeters total horizontal armor 230 millimeters main battery turrets 230 to 495 millimeters armament main battery 9 406 millimeter b37 guns in three turrets secondary battery 12 152 millimeter b38 guns in 6 turret mounts AAA battery for twin mounts with 100 millimeter b54 guns 8 37 millimeter quadruple 46k machine guns aircraft armament for corps to see planes main propulsion plant 6 water-tube boilers and three main geared turbine units full power 230 1000 HP maximum speed 28 knots travel distance 7,200 miles at a speed of 14 knots according to the shipbuilding program of 1938 to 1945 approved by the USSR committee of defense the following number of ships were planned for introduction into service six battleships for the Pacific Ocean fleet for for the Baltic Sea Fleet three for the Black Sea Fleet and two for the Northern Fleet those notches but nothing what does it mean to build 15 battleships can you imagine the required industrial base these battleships required special factories to produce their ammunition artillery mounts machinery and so on the entire economy of the country was geared towards this at the time the ships of project 23 surveyed ski Soyuz were laid down the Soviet Union was suffering from a severe lack of shipbuilding facilities which could hold such heavy ships for that reason a factory in Molotov sck know now as severe at Vince was constructed it had two roofed documents which were used for constructing ship hulls all year round it allowed the construction of ships in the severe north climatic weather conditions all year round the weather conditions had no effect on production quite a desirable novelty in the world shipbuilding industry the difficulties that Soviet industry had to face during the construction of these ships were unprecedented delays in supplying steel for hulls to the shipyards difficulties in producing Armour at the required quality and volume and most importantly a lack of skilled specialists pre-revolution experience in designing and building large ships was partially lost or obsolete as a result the young Soviet school of shipbuilders had to catch up on the trends of the time fast [Music] imagine you're an automobile engineer you're called to Moscow and then told today you'll be building not cars but tanks ta T or T 19 how would you respond perhaps you'd say but I've never built anything like that and they might respond does that mean that you can't build a tank are you an enemy of the Soviet Union a German spy now you've been brainwashed it's neither bad nor good it's just a fact plus you're a member of the Communist Party you're a patriot and you almost certainly don't want to be executed by firing squad all of those things in combination forced people to work study and learn new things this is the phenomenon of Soviet engineers of the 1930s 40s and even 50s they were working 12 to 16 hours of day that was a particular stone ax style when a boss worked until 8 or 9 o'clock in the evening and all of their subordinates did the same what does it mean that you want to go home your boss is working your boss is thinking about how to build battleships abets keys to use aren't you thinking about that as well yes you are thinking about that too [Music] the authorities of the country and their Armed Forces were inspired by the successes of their industrialization aviation industry and tank building industry they were excited about the shipbuilders who never stopped refining and upgrading their projects even after they had been laid down lacking the necessary experience searching for optimal solutions required more extensive experiments and theoretical research which couldn't be always accounted for in the approved terms of the construction program everything was in a mess specialists organization etc they had no idea how to put all of that together the structure of the battleship was constantly changing when engineers began laying down the keel they were still working out what kind of battleship they should build why did this happen once again we didn't have the technology we didn't have an assembly line for battleships technology had moved too far forward and the Soviet engineers needed to build completely different ships compared to those which had been built by the Russian Empire obviously that introduced some significant Corrections into the general understanding of how ships should have looked to advance their capabilities they tried to acquire experience from abroad so the Soviets contacted the United States France Germany and Italy you should understand that it was the 20th century and no country could build anything in total isolation and without help of other countries first of all they needed to research the battleships of foreign countries starting with their potential enemies calibre speed armor the funny part was that all of this data was available in open sources [Applause] taking into account the fact that the firepower of any battleship is mostly in its primary guns the firepower of svet skis so use should have corresponded to the firepower of comparable foreign ships at that time the largest known foreign naval artillery guns at a caliber of 406 millimeter the project for a 406 millimeter gun had been in development for the needs of the Russian Imperial Navy before the Russian Revolution of 1917 almost 20 years later Soviet engineers returned to that task but there was a huge abyss between theoretical calculations and the practical implementation of that gun in its metal form to cross that of s a bridge formed of new plants and production standards had to be built as you might know they successfully crossed that abyss in 1940 the MP 10 test mount was installed at the naval artillery test range in Leningrad for testing gun B 30 70 by simply looking at that round one could easily imagine how enormous a battleship turret with three such guns would have been the most outstanding part of the gun was its barrel which weighed more than 137 tons without its housing 2 blast furnaces were used simultaneously for casting thanks to reduce the barrel then those gigantic cast slabs were forged on a press and processed on a huge bench but with a length of around 36 metres in general it took around a year to produce a single barrel in terms of being a ballistic solution the b37 gun is one of the best in the world it's inferior only to the 460 millimeter gun of Yamato gun but the latter has a larger caliber and the us-made MK 7 gun with its heavy 1225 kilograms shells it's better than the Soviet gun in a number of characteristics basically it's the third best gun in the world neither the Englishman's nor the French nor the Italians had a similar gun even the Germans didn't have anything like it performance characteristics of gun b37 caliber 406 millimeter gun length 20 meters barrel and breech block mass almost 137 tonnes maximum firing range 40 5.6 kilometers initial shell velocity 830 meters per second firing rate 2 shots per minute on June 22nd 1941 the Soviet Union stood as the world's largest industrial power will not bully at a colossal number of planes tanks and money for due to that [Music] but as soon as world war ii started all of their forces were destroyed on the western border [Music] Leningrad was under siege Nikolaev was captured and a pretty significant amount of industrial power was lost with the Mariupol armored plant it also became apparent that the war wasn't going to be fought at sea but on land so all of their forces and supplies were concentrated on provisioning the land front thus the battleship construction program was halted despite the fact that no battleships of the svet ski Soyuz class were built their primary armament still found a purpose in combat even though it wasn't at sea during World War two the MP 10 mount was added to artillery battery once the most powerful artillery unit with the longest range in the siege of leningrad over the time of the city's defense the b37 gun fired a total of 185 shells at German positions destroying several artillery batteries an ammunition warehouse and a reinforced concrete command post during the offensive operation to liberate Leningrad's that ran from January the 15th to the 20th 1944 the gun fired 33 shells one of the shells hit a power plant building that was occupied by Germans raising the building to the ground [Music] [Music] after the war the Soviet authorities considered finalizing the construction of Savitsky sir uses ha it came to the realization that the ship didn't correspond to the post-war reality primarily because of its AAA defences but also because of its secondary armament in addition to that what a peculiar thing happened it was revealed that foreign spies had acquired data about the primary characteristics of the battleship thus in 1949 the ship was sent for scrapping in general if we analyze the economic situation of that time we can say that we couldn't have built 15 battleships by 1946 even at the economic development level of that time but let's imagine the opposite assume that nothing tragic happened in 1941 and svet ski Soyuz had actually been built what would the battleship represent if she had been launched she would have been the most state-of-the-art battleship of that time these ships could have provided security to his Soviet Union from all directions at sea and furthermore fight for supremacy in the theatres of war of the seas one can review the capabilities of battleships of etske so used as a tactical combat unit by comparing her with similar ships being designed in other countries at the time the only similar ship that was actually built was Iowa the British lion and German age class battleships like svet skis Soyuz were never built with respect to her size and displacement so pet skis Soyuz was larger than the British lion and was comparable with us and German battleships however she had much better armor than other battleships regarding her primary armament all of these ships were equipped with 9 406 millimeter guns except for age 39 which should have had eight guns the main advantage of the guns installed on svet ski Soyuz was the higher initial shell velocity which provided a high degree of armour penetration and firing accuracy at short and medium distances that's extremely important for the conditions of bad visibility that are quite common for the Baltic and North seas moreover the firing range of the Soviet guns was greater compared to the guns of Iowa and lion taking into account that's that's key Soyuz had been designed primarily to act within boundary waters she was inferior to other ships in terms of her speed characteristics when you start analyzing the topic in such a manner you begin to understand why these battleships were needed and that the country was capable of building them and also that the design features of these ships fully corresponded to the situation in the world at that time if it weren't for the war the Soviets would have built at least a single ship possibly even to two ships wouldn't have resolved any geopolitical situations but they would at least have been able to cool down some hot ants even though there were never built the svet ski Soyuz class battleships greatly influence the entire scientific technical and production base of the USSR industry brand-new metallurgical industrial sectors appears as well as shipyards and cities were founded in the fields from the resulting infrastructure [Music] the experience acquired by engineers working on the battleship project became the basis of the development of the post-war Soviet Navy [Music] those people who worked on project 23 gained confidence in their abilities and bravely accepted the challenges of the new technological era they went on to successfully create nuclear and guided-missile ocean-going ships in the couple of dozen years that followed [Music] you can activate your bonus code up to April 27 don't panic stay with us and don't forget to subscribe as there are more bonus codes to come have a lovely time fair winds and following seas [Music] they were designed to be the best they met enemies face to face endured tragedies and enjoyed victories they went down in history due to the bravery of their crews they are the ships that deserve to be called naval legends u.s. battleship Alabama British Cruiser Belfast and polish destroyer whiskey Evita these ships are very different but they all have one thing in common [Music] the Bofors el61 of the best automatic anti-aircraft guns of World War two it is estimated that this model of 40 millimeter automatic cannon shot down more airplanes than all other anti-aircraft guns put together caliber 40 millimeter barrel weight 103 kilograms barrel length 56 calibers mm 250 millimeter loading principle clips for shots each rate of fire 120 rounds per minute shell type primarily fragmentation shall weight around 900 grams maximum vertical range 7000 160 meters guns were installed in single coaxial quadruple and six-barreled mounts [Music] she became a very efficient gun for anti-aircraft and surface targets as time progressed the the first of the all Bofors that came on line with the Royal Navy were hand driven in terms of elevation and training and they were had a very basic sight a system and again like a lot of early systems they were reliant on training ability of the Amer's and the gun crew [Music] the specifics of world war ii artillery relies in the fact that the small of the caliber is the Moriya depends on the gun crews on their cohesion and combat performance characteristics of light guns anti-aircraft guns and Bofors in particular are a combination of the artillery mount itself and the training and coordination of its group especially in battle when tensions are running very high there's no time to think you need to move very fast turnaround load new shells and start firing and all this happens automatically without thinking not to a battle sailors often couldn't even remember what they were doing battle level of performance was achieved through constant training this weapon is operated by a crew of four three on the mounting the gun layer the gun trainer the loader the fourth member carries the ammunition from the magazine and loads them into the clips on the side of the gun the l60 was developed in neutral Sweden Bofors a metallic G company started manufacturing canons around the 1870s then it was owned by the famous Alfred Nobel for a while and after World War one Bofors actively cooperated with the German troop consortium in March 1932 the official trials of the automatic anti-aircraft cannon l60 were completed and it was put on the market in 1933 British and American military engineers studied the gun and were quite impressed the Swedish system was more effective than the obsolete British Vickers pom-poms and had more fire piled on the Chicago pianos used by the US the maximum vertical range of Bofors was almost twice that of the British gun and though the Swedish system had a slightly lower rate of fire than its American counterpart the shells it used were twice as heavy [Music] Great Britain the USA and ten other countries purchased a license to produce the governor and by the beginning of World War two Bofors exported their l60 to 18 countries on different continents in particular Denmark Greece Egypt Siam Australia and Argentina it wasn't just the allies that used the Bofors l60 Japanese forces captured several British guns in Singapore and only their underdeveloped industry prevented them from mass producing them the German Navy used el 60s captured in Poland Norway and France from 1939 under the designation flak 28 they were installed on submarines and cruisers Admiral hipper and prinz eugen however the Swedish gun wasn't ideal and required modernization [Music] after 300 rounds it would be too hot and require the barrel to be changed the barrel is air-cooled and therefore the ambient temperature plays a great part in how long it would actually require to cool down during an intense battle several hundreds or even thousands of shots of fire that's why the issue of barrel replacement is so vital this is why the gun crew was trained to carry out this maintenance under combat conditions they could complete the procedure in mere seconds [Music] the mechanical drive system on ship-based anti-aircraft mounts would break down due to its exposure to salt water it needed to be replaced with a hydraulic one the air cooling of the barrel also had to be replaced with water cooling also some design modifications were required to mass-produce the gun one of the main problems of the Bofors l sixties application was a high reliance on the training and skills of the gun crew the job of the loader is to carry or load the gun by lifting the clip dropping into the weapon so once he has done that he then taps the gun layer on his head to let him know the gun is loaded loading a gun like this wasn't easy ammunition had to be taken out of a box and carried to the gun as the gun constantly rotated the carrier had to run around it with a clip of shells in his hands to pass it to the loader [Music] this position on the gun is known as the trainer's position and these handles are turned or reversed to allow the gun to move backwards and forwards on the target using the graphical sight in front of you following the tracer being fired from the gun we can adjust for aim off if we are too far in front or too far behind the target to allow the other side of the gun which is the layers side to then manufacture the elevation for the target as time went on the gun developed and so that we could come away from the the hand driven gun she was turned into a hydraulic driven gun so she had pressure tanks and loins and suchlike which sped up the the training and the elevation of the gun so that they could lock onto targets quicker this is the gun lairs position he was also the captain of the gun and responsible for giving orders to the rest of the crew he would for instance initiate the loading sequence by telling the loader to bring the gun to half this means that the weapon can then be loaded with rounds into the auto feeder he was also responsible for aiming the weapon using the 300 knots sight in front of him using the tracers from the rounds to adjust accordingly the sight arrangement was going away from the spiderweb type of sight to a mirror type of sight which was basically what we call a head-up display today on small displacement ships anti-aircraft guns were aimed manually but on cruises battleships and aircraft carriers the fiery data was produced by directors special systems that controlled anti-aircraft artillery by calculating targeting parameters and sending them centrally to the receiving devices on guns the information on target parameters were supplied by anti-aircraft range finders and later by gun radars the command to engage or fire comes directly from the command and without further ado the gun captain would press the firing push as long as he held his foot on the firing push the gun would continue to fire as long as it had enough ammunition in the hopper to keep feeding it the guns created a fire barrage which was almost impossible for a single aircraft or entire squadrons to penetrate you can see it in old newsreels there's literally a wall of fire in the air and some plane trying to get through it the probability of an aircraft breaking through to his target for example an aircraft carrier or some other ship is very very small the Bofors l60 proved it's worth during World War two the anti-aircraft gun Bofors l/70 became its logical continuation the human factor is crucial in Morse a man can become frightened maybe poorly trained for something unexpected can happen to her as a result the struggle to minimize the influence of the human element to increase the gun a survivability and rate of fire led to the development of a modernized Bofors l/70 which required minimal human input they've compared to the very first Bofors gun such as the L 60 however the L 60 remained in use on some ships in 1982 during the Falklands War which involved Great Britain and Argentina the British managed to shoot down a jet plane using this Bofors gun even in the 1970s when artillery was gradually replaced by missile systems Bofors cannons remained in service not only the upgraded L seventies but also the veteran L 60 it can still be found on some German minesweepers and the heavily armed us ac-130 gunships which provide fire support to ground units [Music] you can activate your bonus code up to April 27 don't panic stay with us and don't forget to subscribe as there are more bonus codes to come have a lovely time fair winds and following seas [Music] Hamilton Ontario is about 45 minutes southwest of Toronto here can be found HMCS hider she's the last of the tribal class destroyers and as Canada's naval legend [Music] if you had asked a Canadian at the beginning of the 20th century to tell you about their country's Navy which has more than 240,000 kilometers of coastline their answer would probably be no longer than this sentence at that time Canada was the Dominion of the British Empire and the defense of its sea borders was entirely under the authority of Whitehall the Canadian Navy didn't he didn't exist until 1910 and then the First World War we had one old retired two old retired cruisers from the Royal Navy but they they did nothing he just served as a depot ships basically a lot of it was do we even have to have a navy in the first place and there was a there was there was a big problem with the old defense in that actually in the 30s do we even need it and there wasn't really a goal wasn't a meet up scene for the Canadian me [Music] in the first half of the 1930s Japan Italy France and Germany were reinforcing their navies with brand-new destroyers carrying powerful artillery and torpedo armament of course Great Britain didn't want to be an outsider in this race in 1935 British engineers developed a destroyer that was able to successfully oppose the most powerful ships of this type at that time the Japanese for buki class destroyers it became known as the tribal class [Music] as soon as the role Navy received 16 tribals British dominions expressed their desire to obtain the newest destroyers as quickly as possible because the drums of the European War were already heard across the oceans Canada mobilised 1/10 Canada in 1939 a population of 12 million won we had 1 million men and women in uniform [Applause] [Music] all of those people were volunteers all Canadian combatants were volunteers so when you see those war graves in Normandy and in Holland delivering or yearly those people were all volunteers [Music] join the war as the Canadian Navy grew mostly thanks to the addition of escort Corvettes and frigates its area of responsibility also increased and in the end included the entire North Atlantic each new ship even a modest minesweeper contributed to the combat capability of the Allies at sea destroyer hider was laid down at the end of September of 1941 at a British vickers-armstrong shipyard the ship was commissioned two years later and was assigned to the Metropolitan Freight [Music] specifications of destroyer Hyder Len almost 150 meters beam more than 11 meters draft 3.96 meters total displacement 2519 targets armament primary armament 6 mark 12 guns installed in 3 twin turrets caliber 120 millimeter mark 16 dual-purpose guns in a twin mount caliber 102 millimeter anti-aircraft artillery a vickers marked 7 quadruple anti-aircraft machine gun pompom caliber 40 millimeter six twin Oerlikon autocannons caliber 20 millimeter mine and torpedo armament a quadruple torpedo launcher caliber 533 millimeter to mark four mortars and an after death charge release care the ship carried 30 mines in reserve power plant 3 admiralty type boilers and to parsons geared steam turbines power 44,000 horsepower maximum speed 36 knots cruising range 5700 miles at 15 knots [Music] hiders primary punch came from three twin 4.7 inch mounts this is very heavy firepower for a destroyer of the era they did come with a couple of advantages as a few German destroyers discovered but they also came with one significant disadvantage the elevation was limited to only about 40 degrees on these mounts in order to fix this what they did was they replaced the four sevens with twin four-inch dual purpose mounts such as ones behind me now these could elevate up to 85 degrees and fussa engage aircraft as well as surface targets add to about fourteen and a half kilometers from the very beginning designers of the tribal project put emphasis on reinforced artillery armament and plan to install five 120 millimeter twin turrets three on the bow and two on the aft the ship was conceived as a destroyer leader and it was intended to partially complete the objectives of a light cruiser supporting squadrons of Allied destroyers defending the main forces of the fleet against enemy destroyer tacks and carrying out long-range reconnaissance and patrols one of the controversial design decisions when they're creating the tribals was that they decided to reduce the torpedo complement in favor of the gun batteries as a result the tribals were only equipped with a single quad man for the 21 inch torpedoes and these would go about five miles at 45 knots the theory was that ordinarily the torpedo will be the main armament of a destroyer to sink ships but it turns out in practice hiatus kills were all done with gunfire the torpedoes were aimed from the bridge wings what would happen is once the trigger was pulled up there a signal was sent to fire this shell casing which has a propellant the gases would then expand within the reservoir here push out the torpedo over the side of the ship kosis tensions will go down and then off towards a target and each torpedo tube is labeled with a letter and what you do is you always fire the aft torpedo first because as the destroyer is moving you want to make sure that they don't hit each other of course having the ships is are very well but they're not gonna do very much without having the personnel demand them Canada started off the war was basically a homeland defense force she had six destroyers a number of smaller vessels and the Navy of about 1700 personnel they had great possibilities from promotion though because by the end of the war Canada's Navy had expanded to over 110,000 personnel and had the third largest amount of surface vessels in the world destroyer Hyder began her combat career by escorting Russian Arctic Convoys at the end of December 1943 the German battle cruiser Scharnhorst tried to attack convoy JW 55b which was escorted by Hyder among others however the destroyer did not have a chance to participate in the destruction of the German Raider it was handled by her more heavyweight allies from the Metropolitan fleet started Second World War II Navy committed to control the row mate and they were controlled operated by the biscuit robos real name was until later on again as cane even grew that we were looking for our own we again started became our own entity unto ourselves because the size would be because of where we were but by and large yesterday maybe was very much treated as Colonials and second-class citizens except for again this ship and the tribals these were those top top of the forum and they bested the Brits at doing the same thing in January 1944 hider was assigned to the 10th destroyer flotilla which monitored the western part of the English Channel on April 26th during a patrol her squadron discovered three German destroyers Hyder and her sister ship Athabascan engaged the German t29 which ended in the destruction of the letter one and a half months later roughly in the same area a battle took place in which Hyder made herself famous and brought glory to the entire Royal Canadian Navy 1944 so Hyder partake in a rather spirited and very chaotic fight against the 8th destroyer flotilla of the German Navy the 8th was a small force consisting of three destroyers to Narvik C captured dutch ship and april peta boat whilst the 10th destroyer flotilla of which Haida was a part consisted of two four ship divisions the 19th was mainly an experience vessels and the 20th was chose 8080 they had been told to intercept the German force which is known to be approaching the Western Approaches of the English Channel and sure enough contact was made at about 7 miles the German destroyers spotted the Allied ships first when they became highlighted by the moonlight the Germans launched 12 torpedoes but their adversaries managed to dodge them an artillery battle broke out and the Allies had total fire superiority Eider and Chiron concentrated fire on z24 and quickly achieved success almost the entire above water part of the ship was destroyed and set ablaze the enemy attempted to flee under the cover of a smokescreen the flagship said 32 continued fighting against TARTA and a shanty on her road and took three hits z32 turned right to put some distance between her and the Allies a shanty rushed after her at this moment the damaged Z h1 became visible in the dissipating smoke her artillery quickly opened fire on Tata but a shanty arrived in time and torpedoed the motionless ship the torpedo explosion told the Zed H ones bow away a shanty kept firing on the German destroyer at 240z h1 exploded and sank later that night Canadian destroyers were sweeping the area and stumbled across the heavily damaged z32 fleeing from them z32 was driven ashore on the ile de batz where in the morning she was finished off by british Beaufighter aircraft the Allies managed to destroy two German destroyers and damaged two more after the successful battle on June the 9th 1944 I'd earned her allies continued to complete missions aimed at removing enemy ships from coastal waters during the fighting in the English Channel Haida had a couple of advantages called radar fact she had three of them she had first see a gunnery radar this is accurate enough to spot fall of shot both outbound and inbound much the consternation of the operators she had warning combined which is a fairly reliable radar although it was well known to the Germans and so the British and Canadians didn't like to use it and this contact was joined and finally she had warning surface which was a pretty reliable radar which would detect a destroy sized target at about nine miles all of these will prove vital in the night fighting in the English Channel despite the fact that the German surface feat was virtually non-existent by the end of June 1944 the naval war went on for more success the Allies achieved in the land operations the more desperately and fiercely German submarines opposed them at sea the time-honored method of dealing with an enemy submarine will be the depth charge usually mounted on Rails at the stern of the ship or may be fired off the side with Kay guns the problem was that in order to hit your target you had to go directly over it which meant a that you lost contact and B he actually had to be accurate enough to do it the end replacement of it however was the squid mortar hider received her squids in the 1950s update they replaced both the depth charge rails and the after gun now the Evalia squid was it was adjustable in range no longer did you have to ride over your target in order to sink it and they were fired automatically by means of a simple electrical connection attached to the sonar system inside the ship HIDA has a u-boat kill to accredit you 971 in 1944 as Hydra was protecting the Western Approaches to the English Channel during the invasion of France overall the Royal Canadian Navy developed a reputation for ASW excellence they sank about 30 you boats and in the post-war period they became the de facto ASW force for NATO during World War two the number of people in the Canadian Navy grew almost 70 times and in all those years Canadian sailors developed their own understanding of Naval Service which was slightly different from the traditions of the British Royal Navy an interesting event in Canadian naval history happened in 1949 with what are known as the Canadian mutinies the word is it a little bit strong for what happened not least because the captain of Athabascan accidentally on purpose left his cover on top of the written list of demands from the junior sailors so he never officially saw anything it happened on a couple of ships about the same time not haider it should be noted and what it really was was more of a sit-down protest pending an airing of grievances and this came down to something of a cultural difference between North Americans and people from England where North American people we tend to be a little bit more independent shall we say we'd like to know why would it well I have a little bit more consideration shall we say from up above instead of simply being told you're gonna do this when you know like it or lump it the officers were more steeped in the tradition of the Royal Navy the British Navy which perhaps there was a little bit more autocratic at the end result of this it all worked out fairly well is that the Canadian Navy devolved new policies which took greater concern of the requirements shall we say of the junior enlisted sailors some people in the Canadian government believed that this incident was inspired by communist ideas but this opinion was completely unjustified moreover the destroy was soon sent to Southeast Asia to fight against the Red Menace again the ship was converted to the way it is now the armor was all changed upgraded in 1951 and this is way the ship was when I went to Korea in 1952 and that's where it can't hide it became famous when it joined what they call the train Busters club this was a method of trying to destroy North Koreans trains that ran along the coast at night and it ran at night figuring they couldn't be seen so he ran a company and became a contest invented by the US Navy to see if they can destroy his trains came train muster in history the train Buster's Club there were 25 trains destroyed hide in a second and train bouncing with two and a half hide his record has always been superb gunnery superb gunnery actions and in fact the current Canadian Navy trophy for gunnery expertise is named after hide it so hide a trophy for a gunnery excellence during her second tour of duty in the Yellow Sea in 1954 haida patrolled Korean shores supervising the implementation of the ceasefire treaty supported by the United Nations this was the first example of what we call today a peacekeeping mission ten years before this notion was introduced and became widely used Qaida reprised this role during the Suez Crisis of 1956 should retired in October 1963 because again the life of a worship is basically 20 years and again at that time the Canadian Navy was expanded you then expanding their building completely different types of ships and but getting the men that were needed on the tribals were needed to me and other ships so the tribals were scrapped it was that time that a next naval person Neil Bruce decided that it be tried to preserve the ship as a Canada's greatest ship and just preservative trouble and they were successful in that an organization was formed heíd incorporated and they acquired the shipment from crown assets in 1964 they bought it for his us huge sums that's I'm twenty thousand dollars and he existed there as a museum new you know National Historic Site if you off the Canadian today to tell you about their country's Navy which has more than two hundred and forty thousand kilometers of coastline then you would definitely hear a long story full of brilliant victories and heroic names especially Haida a destroyer of the Royal Canadian Navy [Music] [Music] you can activate your bonus code up to April 27 don't panic stay with us and don't forget to subscribe as there are all bogus codes to come have a lovely time fair winds and following seas [Music] we're currently in a warehouse for the explosion museum now where we keep many of our artifacts and very interesting guns at the beginning of World War two Italy had quite a powerful Navy however it wasn't powerful enough to take control of the Mediterranean Sea away from Great Britain starting from the 1920s when the fascists came to power Rome wanted to take back the Mari Nostrum having ruled at two thousand years prior however London clearly asserted who the leading power of the Mediterranean was at that time with the havoc wreaked by 20-ish torpedo bombers in November 1940 the Italians understood that they couldn't beat the British Navy out in the open so they devised a plan for a covert war what we have here is a two-month submersible submarine that was designed by the Italians and used in the Second World War this submersible submarine and is an open submarine that is used for attacking ships that are tied alongside in their home ports ie their own harbors it wasn't a brand new idea at the end of World War one the Italians developed and successfully employed a human torpedo two frogmen could covertly approach an enemy ship while controlling a torpedo apparatus they'd attached the charge transported in the torpedo bow and suspended it under the ship's bottom on a tow line between bilge keels they set the detonation time using a simple clock [Music] [Music] in the mid-1930s Italian forces renewed their interest in human torpedoes Mussolini thought of this as the super weapon that was capable of destroying the British Navy which threatened to chase imperial ambitions in 1935 the Italians designed an experimental prototype based on the 533 millimeter torpedo used by their Navy that same year in the mouth of the South keo River between La Spezza and Livorno the Italians established a secret guided torpedo training base where the assault fleet frogmen could master the super weapon the first torpedo prototypes were extremely hard to control and broke down often that's why the Italian sailors nicknamed the apparatus a mohali a pig the guidance system for this is all wires so it's very difficult to steer it's even more difficult to steer once the charges have gone because you've got nowhere no no bow has such to help me steer the year chariot in the same place when this was in use many times this would be abandoned anyway and the divers would be left to their own devices to find the wrong way back to the ship where they came from model SLC saludo LNT Corsa slow running torpedo 1940 its length including the warhead was seven point three meters width of the apparatus was slightly more than half of a meter height at the protection plate level 1 meter weight including the warhead 1588 kilograms weight of the warhead at the earlier design stage was 220 kilograms at the later stages 250 or 350 kilograms powerplant one electric motor 1.6 horsepower power supply a storage battery operating voltage 60 volts maximum speed up to three knots submergence depth up to 30 meters cruising range up to 15 miles crew two people in 1943 Italian engineers designed a new guided torpedo model and called it saludo San Bartolome oh the st. Bartholomew torpedo the cockpit is open to water so the divers will be wearing a year full diving gear which is their diving tanks their masks and all the tubes that go with it so as you can imagine it's not very comfortable and it can be quite awkward to to travel around in that way model SSB 1943 length six point eight meters width zero point eight meters height one metre weight including the warhead 2200 kilograms the carrier could be equipped with either a single 300 or 400 kilogram warhead or two consecutively loaded warheads at 180 or 200 kilograms each power plant one electric motor 7.5 horsepower supplied with a storage battery operating voltage 60 volts maximum speed for knots operating submergence depths up to 30 meters crew two people On June the 10th 1940 Italy joined World War two on Germany's side at the same time the Italian Navy officially adopted the slc guided torpedo and they immediately started their drills at the secret base in the mouth of the sake of river for sabotage missions against the British Navy located in the Mediterranean Sea in 1942 forty-one fleet frog men on the slc guided torpedoes executed eight raids on the main British naval bases in Gibraltar Malta and Alexandria most of the missions failed but the Italians persistently mastered the combat application and equipment of their guided torpedoes the levers and the controls in here part from these steering controls we have valves which control the air in the ballast tanks again to assist the depth of the underwater and submersible the whole contraption is more like a fairground ride than it is a a serious war machine but you know in 1942 1943 when this was used they were prepared to try anything and they would launch these in the dead of night and then they would go into harbors to cause as much damage as they possibly could at the end of 1941 the axis launched another offensive on the English ships the naval situation was more than just satisfactory I wind to the successful actions of the German submarines there were only two battleships left in the British Mediterranean fleet Queen Elizabeth and valiant both ships were located in the Alexandria port [Music] on December the 14th submarine sheera carrying three SLC guided torpedoes and ten frogmen left the secluded Porto Lago Bay on Leros Island and set sail towards Alexandria on the 4th day of sailing soon after sunset the submarine reached its destination point one and a half miles from the Alexandria trading port on December the 18th 1941 around midnight a commando team set off for a mission on three guided torpedoes they were approaching the harbour entrance semi-submerged the entrance was blocked by a steel net that could become a serious threat to the mission but Fortuna smiled upon the frogmen the English had removed the barriers to let their destroyers into the base the Italian seized the moment and entered the harbour together with the Destroyers the team separated once they'd entered the harbour the mines were planted on Queen Elizabeth precisely as planned the commandos fixed a towline on the bilge keels and set up a charge exactly under the keel the mines were also planted on tanker Saguna without any issues but the crew that were mining battleship valiant encountered some difficulties within a few meters of the ship the breathing apparatus of one of the commandos failed forcing him to surface then their torpedo died in the water and sank due to a technical failure leftenant luigi de la Penna trolled the torpedo all by himself and left it under the bottom of the battleship close to the magazine of the first turret in the morning of December the 19th three explosions blasted in the Alexandria port that's house six commandos on three guided torpedoes managed to shift the naval balance in the Mediterranean Sea in favor of the Italians however not for long the italians tried to keep their super weapon a secret but the british successfully procured several of the human torpedoes in august 1943 the guided tour pedo fleet executed their last successful mission using the my ally italy capitulated several weeks later and all its military secrets fell into the hands of the Allies [Music] [Applause] you can activate your bonus code up to April 27 don't panic stay with us and don't forget to subscribe as there are more bonus codes to come have a lovely time fair winds and following seas [Music] they were designed to be the best they met enemies face to face endured tragedies and enjoyed victories they went down in history due to the bravery of their crews they are the ships that deserve to be called naval legends [Music] in this episode project seven destroyers legendary Soviet sevens [Music] in qingdao eastern china on the shores of the Yellow Sea destroyer and Zhang is docked as one of the ports mortgages she served in the Navy of the People's Republic of China for thirty years but that's only one chapter in her biography [Music] in the past this destroyer was called aura cordoning she served in the Pacific Ocean protecting the USSR's borders and was one of 28 projects 7 destroyers known to naval history enthusiasts as the legendary Soviet sevens the history of these destroyers began in the 1930s after the Russian Civil War the shipbuilding industry of the young Soviet state had to be rebuilt from scratch by that time the naval forces of the workers and peasants Red Army had only 17 destroyers that had been built before World War one why destroy us there's a saying mighty oaks from little acorns grow destroyers a versatile chef she carries artillery lays mines fights off enemy planes engages enemy ships and conducts reconnaissance she can carry out a multitude of missions that's why this ship was intended for the Black Sea the Baltic Sea and to some extent the North Sea in the Pacific Ocean at that time the Navy only had Novak's of course they became completely obsolete though at the time of their construction they were the most powerful destroyers in the world but by the 1930s they were no match for their counterparts from the fleet's of the greatest naval powers that's why the Soviet Navy desperately needed a replacement for their destroyers the newest Italian maestro a class destroyer was chosen to serve as a prototype for project 7 Soviet engineers went to Italy studied the blueprints observed the ship's construction process and in three years created a general arrangement for a new Soviet production destroyer we're two main theatres of naval operations the Black Sea and the Baltic Sea both are closed this means that we don't have waves we don't need ocean routes and we don't need a big range of independent operations we don't need to cross the Atlantic or Pacific Ocean between San Francisco and the Carl's Sea to defeat the Japanese for example there were no such objectives everything is closed everything is near the shore this is the reason why Italian projects were so interesting to us they were also intended for closed theatres of operations total displacement two thousand four hundred tons length 112 and a half meters beam more than 10 meters draft about five meters powerplant to main gtz a twenty four turbines and three water-tube boilers power fifty four thousand brake horsepower artillery armament for b13 to s gun mounts caliber 130 millimetres anti-aircraft armament 234 k anti-aircraft guns caliber 76 millimeters 470 k automatic anti-aircraft guns caliber 37 millimeters to DShK machine guns caliber 12 point 7 millimeters to coaxial colt browning machine guns of the same caliber torpedo armament 2 triple torpedo launchers 39 new anti-submarine armament 2 depth charge throwers at BMD 167 big and small B 1 and M one depth charges mine armament from sixty to ninety five mines maximum speed 37 knots cruising range 1447 nautical miles [Music] the construction of new destroyers was in full swing when an accident that happened some 4,000 kilometers away from the Soviets borders almost put an end to project seven where he is our Fleur and English destroyer had a very serious accident and she had a mine you were still his store it transpired that the linear layout of the power generating machines consisting of one boiler room in one engine room resulted in the ship being dead in the water this story discouraged the Soviet leaders if we are building the stories that would sink after hitting a single mine this cannot be tolerated our industry is not that strong and we don't have enough money to lose enormous sums when a destroyers can't withstand a mine explosion Comrade Stalin ordered that the issue be looked into and at the time 1937 repression was at its peak the verdict was sabotage but those who worked on the project were charged three engineers were sent to prison the project was on the brink of cancellation 14 destroyers that had already been launched were to be redone and the rest dismantled on the stocks however regardless of the threat of repression designers of the sevens managed to defend their project a decision was made to finish 28 destroyers according to project 7 while the following 18 ships were laid down according to a new and improved design named project 7 new globe the motley team is the main difference between project 7u and project 7 is increased survivability this was achieved by installing four boilers instead of three even if two boilers were disabled it wouldn't be catastrophic for a destroyer she could continue to maneuver even with a single boiler working and that's all speed manoeuvrability artillery armament tippy-toes torpedo a mine armament were the same this was the main difference when designing project seven and seven new destroyers engineers put emphasis on mine and torpedo armament and artillery Soviets five hundred and thirty three millimeter torpedoes corresponding to those installed on ships from other countries while their mines were some of the best in the world for the time as for primary guns Engineers initially planned to arm the sevens with the so called Cruiser set comprised of one hundred and thirty millimeter guns they created an excellent primary gun which was outstanding for that time it had a diameter of 130 millimeters and a barrel length of 6.5 meters it turned out that the destroyer was the most powerful in terms of artillery armament relationship until the American fletcher-class arrived world war ii revealed the main shortcoming of the sevens anti-aircraft armament when the destroyers were being designed aircraft wasn't considered a serious threat that's why the anti-aircraft armament of the sevens was very weak to semi-automatic 45 millimeter k21 anti-aircraft cannons to DShK machine guns and that's it we would get obstacles you're the arrival of dive bombers made this shortcoming obvious you and gifts to hoist my signal especially the German junker Jew 87 this was an absolutely unique machine they could drop a bomb directly into a large ship smokestack to get past the armor you can imagine the scope of devastation caused by a bomb that enters through the smokestack [Music] due to the danger from above the destroyers were augmented with a 37 millimeter anti-aircraft gun it had one major shortcoming after about a hundred of shots his barrel would overheat and need to be replaced often right in the middle of a battle however in general the gun brought good results in battle after the Navy began installing this type of gun on ships and on the sevens in particular their anti-aircraft armament was considerably improved and they were now ready to protect the country sea borders [Music] by the beginning of World War two 28 project seven and 18 projects seven new destroyers were built the ships arrived just in time and were on a par with those of their potential opponent Germany the latest German destroyers boasted an extra gun they carried five primary guns they had approximately the same speed and a displacement that was about 500 tons greater but they were equipped with an unreliable power plant it had been designed to work best at maximum speed as a result the fuel consumption was much higher but that is respectable watching but furthest what deliver which led to a reduction in the cruising range for German destroyers in the morning when the war began the sevens became the backbone of the Soviet fleet in all theatres of naval operations in the Black Sea they fought through to Sevastopol and a desert to deliver ammunition and evacuate the wounded in the Baltic Sea they defended Leningrad and in northern seas they protected two allied convoys that supplied equipment and ammunition to the USSR these ships were getting blown up by mines and directly hit by bombs and artillery shells but then after being repaired to docks returning to the Seas 10 out of 28 sevens and half of the projects seven new destroyers perished during World War two but to earn true military glory let's take the project seven guard destroyers so all Brasi tell me for example during the war the four years of war she participated in numerous Shore bombardments troop landings at the aircraft and anti-submarine defense operations and lost only five men of her crew throughout the entire war even then they were lost when one of the boilers exploded after a serious malfunction this means she had no battle casualties at all can you imagine this kind of survivability for years of war and and battles in only five non battle casualties that's how good project 7u was [Music] during war it's not uncommon for a battle of local importance to become a milestone in the history of the entire war the battle near cannon nose on September the 18th 1942 was one of those battles why this routine battle it was just another day for the Northern Fleet nothing out of the ordinary but why did Cannon Norse go down in history why do people talk about it so much the thing is in the summer of 1942 a tragedy took place convoy PQ 17 was destroyed even under these circumstances the British government and Churchill especially were convinced the supply convoys had to be temporarily suspended because it was too dangerous to send them out in the summer in autumn of 1942 we desperately needed every gun every aircraft and every litre of fuel that allies were bringing to us finally in autumn we were able to persuade our Western allies Britain in particular to renew supplies and to organize convoy PQ 18 the whole world every military and political leader of the Soviet Union Great Britain and the USA were following the fate of this convoy will it be able to reach Soviet Shores finally the convoy set off [Music] for the first half of the trip the convoys sailed under the protection of Allied forces and lost 11 ships then Soviet ships took over to project seven destroyers remya she and so crew she tell me were among them near cape cannon knows the Germans organized a powerful combined attack on the convoy with aircraft and submarines [Music] torpedo bombers were the first to hit the convoy a total of 24 Heinkel h e triple one aircraft made to raise [Music] then came the dive-bombers 60 junkers planes attacked the allied ships German aircraft were met with powerful coordinated anti-aircraft fire from the patrol ships primary armament guns for firing time delay grenades into the water taking the necessary target lead though flying a chi triple ones caught in the columns of water produced by the explosions were falling apart or getting hit by shrapnel from exploding shells the Germans lost 15 aircraft in the battle one transport ship was hit by torpedoes it was the only loss that the convoy suffered while under the protection of the USSR's Northern Fleet [Music] [Laughter] if the bullet was difficult to fight off 60 Ju 88's several submarine attacks and that constant howling it's really difficult to explain now but you understand how hard it was for the sailors you need firstly it was September yeah the cold but at the same time hot in the heat of battle the constant howling of aircraft water splashes incredible tension aircraft attacking from all directions and then there are incoming torpedoes in the air from submarines Frost might two and a half hours of this unbelievable tension it's really hard to understand how difficult it was even on a psychological level [Music] they endured this battle that he protected the convoy improved them the northern route is passable though dangerous that's why Kenan nas went down in history this battle proved that Arctic Convoys were necessary must continue and they were renewed [Music] after the war destroyers battered by fights and sea cruises were sent for major repairs one by one and in the 1950s they were gradually decommissioned [Music] [Applause] today only three of the legendary sevens exist those given to the People's Republic of China but record me is one of these ships all our life she served in the Pacific Ocean in 1952 the destroyer underwent major repairs was modernized several times and remained in service until the end of the 1980s nice and what the girl what does this tell us of course she was modernized and proved it just means that it was a good project from the very beginning some are components the will assist the hull framework am layout were that good that the ship could endure and serve for more than 50 years it says a lot about the quality of the project [Music] project seven and seven new destroyers turned out to be timely and effective ships they had powerful artillery excellent torpedoes and decent speed these were the sevens that took the Soviet Navy to a completely new level becoming the backbone of the naval forces throughout four hard years of world war ii and their names became legends [Music] you can activate your bonus code up to April 27 don't panic stay with us and don't forget to subscribe as there are more bonus codes to come have a lovely time fair winds and following seas [Music] they were designed to be the best they met enemies face to face endured tragedies and enjoyed victories they went down in history due to the bravery of their crews they are the ships that deserve to be called naval legends [Music] [Music] in this episode watch your motto life and death of the legendary battleship [Music] by spring 1945 it became clear that only a miracle could save Japan from defeat in World War two the Land of the Rising Sun had lost virtually all its naval and air forces and US troops were already landing on the Japanese islands on the morning of April 6 Japan's legendary battleship yamato sailed off to fight her last battle the last bit of hope for Japanese posess rested with this steel giant the largest of most powerful battleship of the time done that naval operation of the Pacific dub tune Ichigo having one it was a dangerous mission but the faith in Yamato was almost religious and the Japanese believe luck would go hand in hand with the ship [Music] the history of battleship yamato began ten years before the ship's legendary last mission in october 1935 japanese engineers put together a first draft of the famous naval giant unlike the americans whose ships were limited to a size that could pass through the Panama Canal nothing restricted the Japanese from building ships of a large size in displacement and arming them as heavily as possible Japanese designers set out to make battleships powerful enough to outmatch all existing foreign counterparts and any ships that would be built in the upcoming years let us the production facilities behind me were the Kure naval Arsenal in those days its Dockyard saw the birth of battleship yamato her keel was laid in 1937 and the ship was completed in 1941 Yamato was the heaviest battleship in the world back then the total construction expenses amounted to 130 million yen that would be over one trillion yen eight billion dollars in today's prices initially Japan planned to build a total of four Yamato class ships however the Pacific War began and after completing the second ship Musashi Japan stopped building the third ship shinonome and never started the fourth will eventually shinato was converted to an aircraft carrier Yamato is the ancient name for Japan meaning great harmony strict secrecy was maintained throughout a construction a high fence of mats surrounded the dockyard all engineers swore a solemn oath of non-disclosure and the workers going in and out were compared with their photos Japanese shipbuilders certainly had something big to hide total displacement seventy two thousand eight hundred and eight tons length two hundred and sixty three meters beam thirty eight point nine meters draft over ten meters armament main battery three turrets each having 40s came out 94 guns caliber 460 millimeters secondary battery two turrets each having three type three guns caliber 155 millimetres anti-aircraft artillery 12 I'll type 89 guns caliber 127 millimetres 50 triple barrel and two single barrel type 96 automatic cannons caliber 25 millimeters Air Group 7 sea planes reconnaissance planes and spotting aircraft armored main-belt 272 four hundred and ten millimeters main turrets a hundred and ninety to 650 millimetres conning tower three hundred to five hundred millimeters powerplant for camp on turbines and twelve camp on ro boilers power 154,000 shaft horsepower maximum speed over 27 knots operational range 7,200 nautical miles at 16 knots [Music] Yamato's key features are her main turrets each having three four hundred sixty millimeter guns the guns could fire shells weighing almost 1.5 tons with a muzzle speed of 790 meters per seconds them above it's nothing a gun turret including the Barbet weighed 3,000 tons it could contain over 150 men Yamato's main turrets / guided by a fire control system consisting of a director that provided parameters of fire rangefinders and electro mechanical calculators a form of early computers it was a state-of-the-art system for the time lack of fire control radars for engaging surface targets was compensated for by top-notch grouping of salvos this gave the Japanese firing capability on par with that of the world's leading navies the ship's secondary battery consisted of two turrets each having 355 millimeter guns the guns featured excellent ballistic characteristics and could penetrate the armor of a typical Cruiser however their rate of fire was when commissioned yamato had six cokes i'll 127 millimetres anti-aircraft guns for long-range engagement plus short-range anti-aircraft artillery consisted of eight triple barrel 25 millimeter cameras the number of the AAA guns was constantly built up during the war the 127 millimeter anti-aircraft guns and the 25 millimeter guns had different ranges of fire so if an enemy aircraft flew into this gap neither of the guns was able to effectively intercept it furthermore the 127 millimeter of guns had relatively low Traverse speed and poor elevation and depression characteristics they also failed to fire at the declared rate of 14 rounds per minute if the elevation was high or low [Music] Yamato enjoyed the heaviest armor in shipbuilding history it's us analog battleship Iowa hirama that was on average a hundred millimeters thinner the armored belt of the Japanese giant formed a citadel that covered slightly over half of her waterline length the most protected part was the ship's calming tower the weapon systems became literally giant the Japanese built a super battleship that was like ten or fifteen others put together but the problem was that it did not pay off you can build one yamato-class battleship but she would still be destroyed when facing to three or ten US battleships there is still such characteristics as mobility quantity quality salvos per side [Music] Yamato was commissioned in late 1941 in her first mission the Battle of Midway Yamato served as the flagship of the Japanese combined fleet during the battle On June 4 through 6 1942 Yamato did not fire a single shot and was used only as an HQ ship the Japanese military command was definitely saving their two best battleships for an upcoming major battle against the US fleet as a result Japanese seamen started to feel disappointed with their flagship they even made up a saying that the world's three most useless things were China's Great Wall the Egyptian pyramids and the battleship yamato [Music] it was not until autumn 1944 that the Japanese naval giant fought its first real battle to get out with her sister ship Musashi Yamato attacked us landing craft near the island of Leyte [Music] in that battle Yamato was only slightly damaged demonstrated her power and recovered the stages of an unsinkable giant however the situation in the Pacific Theater had changed by that time [Music] progress in military technology basically follows the laws of philosophy we're making a new weapon system designers in the military usually seek to enhance his specifications bigger caliber thicker armor etc then they come to a dead end where they are no longer developing the Navy but improving a separate weapon type within the existing limits a radical change is carrier-borne aviation and later missile systems but Yamato is the peak in the construction of battleships it is not about progress it is about reaching the peak in 1945 World War two which Japan's home islands the command of the Japanese combined fleet made a Bushido style decision Yamato with the help of a light cruiser and eight destroyers was to defend the island of Okinawa and prevent the US troops from getting any further inland or fight to the end and finish her journey gloriously executing this order on April 6 1945 the legendary Japanese battleship sailed off to fight her last battle the United States entered its task force 58 to intercept the flagship of the Japanese combined fleet the Americans were docked mr. chance to destroy the symbol of Japan's naval power as early as 10:00 a.m. the first u.s. squadrons took off from five heavy and for light aircraft carriers located about 300 miles away from here motto a total of 227 aircraft took part at the destruction of the Japanese force the battle began at 12:34 for aerial bombs hit yamato taking out of hundred and twenty seven millimeter gun and several automatic cameras in just 20 minutes two more bombers struck the battleship and a torpedo hit her portside in response Yamato fighter anti-aircraft weapons at 1402 the Americans launched the last attack on the wounded but still combat capable Yamato it was a demonstrative execution for torpedoes free to the portside amount of the starboard side destroyed the ship's damage control center Yamato stopped moving and started listing to port more and more every minute and when this huge ship capsized a monstrous explosion erupted [Music] the pride and hope of the Japanese fleet went uncle together with the ship 3000 crewmembers were lost including the commanders of the Japanese force and the ship [Music] for the japanese yamato still remains a symbol of the nation's might that fell in battle like a truce and you are the city where the legendary battleship was built opened a museum whose centerpiece is a 26-metre model of yamato who don't know they then thought the core a Municipal Museum of naval history and science was built ten years ago to preserve the rich naval history of the city now it is known as the Yamato Museum the exhibits reflect the naval history of Korea in other words the history of naval affairs and technologies the museum has become quite popular fans of battleships come here from all over the country however we should remember that it was originally dedicated to all kinds of shipbuilding I did the violent explosion that finished the destruction of Yamato was caused by the detonation of her main battery magazines however there is plenty of debate about the reason for that tremendous explosion the answer is probably hidden on the bottom of the ocean so far researchers have been unable to lift what is left from the giant battleship disgust he would it it is true that yamato had a number of drawbacks like her sister ship Musashi the battleship was sunk as a result of airstrikes the key reason for that was the ship's fundamental lack of ability to resist massive air attacks [Music] Yamato remains the largest and most powerful battleship in history for every person who takes interest in the history of military ships Yamato embodies military might born to terrify and crush enemies this formidable steel giant managed to glorify her name even as she was defeated she represented a pinnacle in large battleship design one that will probably never be surpassed and in that sense Yamato will always remain a symbol and a legend [Music] [Music] you can activate your bonus code up to April 27 don't panic stay with us and don't forget to subscribe as there are more bonus codes to come have a lovely time fair winds and following seas [Music] of all the weapons used by the warring parties in world war ii a special place is occupied by a gun from a swiss company all again this autocannon was operated by the militaries on both sides of the front line but only the Allies managed to reveal its full potential using the Swiss designed weapon the Allied navies provided their ships with highly effective air defense [Music] [Music] the Oracle is a Swiss design gun made in the UK under license and it was introduced into the Royal Navy in 1940 specifications of the Oerlikon anti-aircraft gun caliber 20 millimetres barrel weight with breech block from 64 to 68 kilograms gun length 2210 millimetres ammunition feed drum magazine holding 45 60 75 or 100 rounds rate of fire from 250 to 300 and 20 rounds per minute the guns were fitted in single twin and quadruple mountings [Music] [Music] the gun is used for Ram fast air surface targets and for anti-aircraft as well so the the gun was fitted to many many naval ships from aircraft carriers right down to the smallest step minesweepers in 1941 england commissioned battleship Duke of York with six Oerlikon cannons on board it was the first British warship armed with Swiss anti-aircraft guns one of the key requirements that the British put forward for all Eakins was that they be operable and maintainable from qualified personnel like fishermen and sailors from the merchant fleet this condition proved to be quite farsighted before World War two kicked off Great Britain ordered 1,500 guns from Switzerland and purchased a license for their production by 1943 single barrel Oerlikon anti-aircraft guns were no longer effective against fast and well protected enemy aircraft a good solution to this problem was the development of multi gun mounts this is a 20-millimeter Oerlikon mark 11 mounting fitted with two 20 millimeter cannons each capable of firing up to 350 rounds a minute per gun however a magazine only holds 60 rounds so the rate of fire is dependent upon the crews ability to resupply magazines to the gun throughout the action the twin mounts were fed with ammunition from the left and right hand sides to avoid mistakes during loading the magazine for the left gun was painted in a bright color this is the 60 round magazine which fits on the cannon this one is empty but is still very heavy imagine it filled with 60 rounds fits on the cannon like this and would be changed perhaps three or four times during an engagement the loaders job is not just to load the magazine she has to put the bullets or the shells inside the magazine each shell is individually loaded into the magazine pre-greased to allow for lubrication through the firing system as you can see the aimer uses his bodyweight to move the mounting in the training motion the elevation is adjusted by the hand wheel you can see here when he's given the command by the gunnery controller and once he has got the gun onto the target he calls aim a target and has given the command to engage at that point he takes the safety catch off and fires the weapon when a shot is fired gunpowder gasses apply pressure to the projectile which starts moving out of the barrel and the cartridge which pushes the breech makes it slide along the barrel the weight of the breech and the return force of the spring pressed by it are matched in such a way so that the moment the projectile leaves the barrel a spent cartridge is ejected from the breech block and the next round is fed to her place from the magazine at this moment the recoil spring pushes the breech back ramming the shell into the chamber there are two loaders for this gun one for the right gun and one for the left obviously they don't just lift full magazines onto the gun and take the empty ones away their duties are also to act as the emergency crew should anything happen to the aimer who sits on the left-hand side then the muck gun can be fired manually by one person from the back of the gun here the gulls in the twin mount fire in turn as a result it's cyclic rate of fire is about 600 rounds per minute the Oerlikon was used on ships as a short-range anti-aircraft gun it's effective range of fire was up to 2 kilometers you can say it was a last chance weapon especially for American ships as they had to face Japanese kamikaze attacks in the Pacific [Music] during the war Allah can autocannons were extensively installed on the ships of the Allies for example the American essex-class aircraft carriers were equipped with up to 50 Oregon guns therefore the number of people on board the ships became significantly larger due to the anti-aircraft gun crews remembering that all the crew are actually linked together by the gunnery control communication system they all can hear the commands from the gunnery director platform and the gun master gunner this box relates to the type 6 gyro sight and it's the controlled inputs which are given to him by the gunnery control gunnery director pro platform personnel prior to the start of the engagement and set such things as wind speed direction and air temperature which affect the ballistics of the ammunition if during the engagement which obviously is very noisy there is a need to stop firing the gunnery director officer in the gunnery director platform we'll press the check fire bell which operates this belt you see here and this rings continuously until the aimer replies through his communication system check check check which informs the gunnery officer that he has stopped firing [Music] during World War two the Allies produced over 300,000 Oerlikon cannons many of them were later modified and upgraded but in general they still remained a Swiss design the gun was too advanced for the time when it was developed in the early 1930s and only when world war ii broke out did this cannon occupy a niche where it was unmatched on both opposing sides according to US statistics from December 1941 through September 1944 as many as 32% of all Japanese aircraft were shot down by naval or leakin guns in the second half of 1942 about 48% of enemy aircraft losses resulted from the use of these small calibre cannons [Music] after the war the 20-millimeter Oerlikon a a gun remained in service with many navies around the globe until it was inevitably replaced by more advanced systems however even today you can still see the world war ii design Orlick and guns installed on some small patrol ships [Music] you can activate your bonus code up to April 27 don't panic stay with us and don't forget to subscribe as there are more bonus codes to come have a lovely time fair winds and following seas [Music] in his memoirs dedicated to world war ii Winston Churchill wrote did the only thing that made him worry about Great Britain losing the water Germany with the German submarines in the small town labo in northern Germany the last surviving type 7 submarines stand solitary on the beach it was this submarine type that worried Winston Churchill imposed the most severe threat to shipping in the Atlantic Ocean at the beginning of the 1940s [Music] laughter by saya Fatah virus dot the Treaty of Versailles strictly forbade Germany from designing building or possessing submarines all this was forbidden nevertheless in order to preserve their school of underwater shipbuilding and build upon the experience gained in World War one a shipbuilding design bureau was registered in 1922 in the hay with German engineers as members of his staff this firm offered many countries the possibility to purchase projects of submarines developed on the basis of the German World War one submarine UB three simultaneously they were working on the projects of so-called mobilisation submarines the largest submarine was called type 1 while a submarine with smaller displacement of 500 tons evolved to become the type 7 project the idea was that if and when Germany entered a war all the restrictions imposed by the Treaty of Versailles would naturally become obsolete and submarines of this type could be built very quickly in large quantities [Music] the further development of type seven submarines and they construction became possible thanks to a naval treaty signed between Germany and Great Britain in 1935 this treaty allowed Germany to have a navy of a total tonnage not greater than one-third of that of the British Navy as for submarines Germany was given the right to have a fleet equal to the British one the important thing was that this submarine was very easy to construct thanks to its design which allowed for extensive use of welding enormous numbers of these boats could be constructed in a relatively short period of time despite the design of type 7 submarines repeating concepts from World War one this ship had great potential for further modernization thus sub types a and B appeared which differed from each other only in their details the general concept of a medium submarine with a displacement of 700 tons remain unchanged a submarine can only have well-balanced characteristics up to some specific dimensions if it's a large submarine it starts to have control issues when out of water it also has problems with surfacing submerging and excess trim differences all this leads to a reduction in a submarines overall manoeuvrability [Music] considering this maneuverability is no less important than combat capability engineers added an important improvement to subtype be the double vertical rudder this allowed them to considerably reduce the turning circle radius which provided certain tactical advantages when the mass production of type 7 submarines began they received the designation 7c in this case there were two subtypes as well namely 7c 41 and c 42 specifications of submarine u99 five type seven stroke 41 1943 length more than 67 meters beam more than 6 meters mean draft four point seven meters submerged displacement 871 tonnes with this modification the boat's hull was made longer by one frame spacing to accommodate new sonar it's 60 centimeters adding only one frame allowed for a 20 ton increase in the fuel reserves as well but it had a negative impact on speed the submarine lost about half or not from its submerged speed its sucide tank submarine her aft and bow ends size bulges and deck superstructure with the calling towers railing were welded to the pressure hull maximum diameter of the pressure hull almost five meters thickness of the pressure hull eighteen point five to twenty one point five millimeters the submarines pressure hull is divided into six compartments first forward torpedo room second forward battery compartment with commanding officers cabins on the deck third control room with conning tower on top of it this is where the captain was situated during an attack the control room was also the shelter compartment and surrounded by concave bulkheads that are able to withstand pressure up to 10 atmospheres this is the pressure found at a depth of about a hundred meters fourth living quarters with the galley the second group of batteries was located in its hold v diesel compartment vi aft torpedo room two electric motors were also installed here the main ballast went into five tanks two at the ends in the outer hull two inside the bulges and the last one in the pressure hull under the third compartments deck three times could be used to store fuel armament five torpedo launchers calibre 533 millimetres ammunition 14 torpedoes the g7e electric torpedo german submariners nicknamed it the eel it's noteworthy that it was developed in 1929 however the design turned out to be so successful the various modifications of its were manufactured until 1944 the latest versions of the torpedo was self-guided and equipped with a heating system inside the launcher which allowed it to travel up to a distance of seven point five kilometers at a speed of 30 knots artillery armament initially these submarines carried the sk c stroke 35 gun with a caliber of 88 millimeters however with the changing nature of combat anti-aircraft armament began to appear on sevens from 1942 onwards u99 5 had the following flak m42 u cannon calibre 37 millimeters - flak 38 autocannons caliber 20 millimetres powerplant 2 diesel engines with a total power of 3,200 horse power to electric engines 750 horsepower each two groups of accumulator batteries 62 elements each [Music] for this modification that powerplant was rearranged to free up 11.5 tons of displacement this allowed engineers to increase the pressure hulls thickness as a result the operating depth increased to 120 meters and the maximum depth reached 300 meters the boat was equipped with a special system that allowed her diesel engines to work underwater a snorkel maximum surface speed 17 knots maximum submerged speed 7.6 knots operating range surfaced 8,500 miles at 10 knots submerged 80 miles at 4 knots endurance 40 days [Music] everything was sacrificed to increase the combat capability of the ship two people shared one bunk and some even slept on torpedoes all available space was taken up by provisions and even one of the lavatories wasn't used during the first week of a combat cruise because it was stuffed full of food supplies to complete the picture imagine how the air those people breathed was a mixture of diesel engine exhaust and kitchen smells spiced with a dense aroma of Cologne which submariners generously applied to themselves as they had no means to bathe properly crews spent a long time in training to perfect all the maneuvers on their submarines a large number of torpedoes were provided for training generally they made tens of torpedo launches under varying conditions that's why when a submarine sailed out on a combat patrol it was business as usual for them they had already carried out all the potential operations multiple times and could perform their tasks automatically this allowed them to achieve great results [Music] this bunk is somewhat bigger than the rest obviously it's where the captain would sleep it's unclear if he ever managed to get a good night's sleep because even when he was resting he was aware of all the events happening inside and outside the boat the radio and sonar room are just opposite his cabin when the situation required his urgent presence in the control room the captain only needed to take a couple of steps to get there this is the horizontal rudder control station the rudders were driven electrically but there was a backup hydraulic system in place when the order to submerge was given the operators would set the rudders to the necessary position these valves controlled the main ballast they would be opened gradually as the submarine reached a certain difference which was controlled with the help of this device quite often an unusual trick was used to speed up the submergence all the off-duty crew members at that moment would quickly run into the bow compartment all these actions were perfected during training so in a battle a well-prepared crew could bring their submarine from the surface position to a depth of 10 meters in 25 to 27 seconds this was considered the best result in the world at that time [Music] [Music] in the summer of 1939 German leadership formulated the main strategic objective for the German Navy the destruction of British merchant shipping torpedo armed submarines were the best candidates to do this and the more numerous they were the sooner this objective would be completed on September 3 u30 sank British liner SS Athena thus began world war ii at Caen [Music] the liner's torpedoing gave a certain reputation to type 7 submarines and to the entire German underwater fleet the Allies began to armed civilian ships with artillery to fight against submarines in response Germany declared unrestricted submarine warfare and started the mass production of submarines torpedo launches on 7th were not very different from their analogs used by the navies of other countries however they had a number of interesting features for example torpedoes were pushed out with the help of a pneumatic piston which gave the advantage of a bubble-free torpedo launch a torpedo could also be programmed with the necessary course speed and depth without taking it out of the tube this was done with the help of a mechanical system connecting to external sockets on a torpedo the required parameters could be set both here and from the central control room type 7 submarines were easy to control reliable cheap to build and had a good balance of combat and operational qualities although by their design features these boats weren't meant for prolonged combat use their unique characteristics such as dive speed and maximum submergence depth made them practically invulnerable so by the beginning of World War two the German Navy had at their disposal arguably the best weapon to wage underwater war as well as perfectly trained crews and only one person knew how to use them to achieve maximum results Dennett's was an experienced submarine commander during World War one he carried out many successful operations in the Mediterranean from the very beginning in 1935 he made a significant impact on the development of the German underwater fleet he developed the tactics that would later be used by submarines including the so called Wolfpack tactic each submarine was assigned a position and the entire group formed a line that crossed the expected route of a convoy the width of this curtain and the distance between submarines resulted in a high probability of the discovery of a passing convoy by at least one boat the data on the location and of course of a convoy could also be obtained by radio reconnaissance or aviation all the information was gathered by an operation center on the shore which coordinated the actions of the group and sent to all nearby submarines to attack a convoy once a submarine discovered a convoy she would send its position to the center and continue tracking the target staying at a safe distance from it [Music] in the night she would make a dash towards the convoy surface and deliver a torpedo strike during this she remained invisible the visibility is very poor at night so you would need to search for her need to discover her unlike destroyers after an attack she didn't need to retreat she just dived and that's it you couldn't see her she then moved to another position to deliver another strike and as there would be many submarines and they all attacked almost simultaneously it caused the convoys escort ships to spread out so they would attack one submarine and another appeared chasing the second submarine a third one would emerge like this subs got closer and closer to the convoy which remained virtually defenseless and this all resulted in a very serious loss of tonnage it meant that you could quickly and efficiently destroy convoys [Music] on October 17 1940 u-boat u38 discovered the sc7 convoy the sub sent the convoys coordinates to der Nets his headquarters in Lorien they were immediately forwarded to all the submarines patrolling that area throughout the following day gathering submarines attacked three ships from the convoy at the same time the only escort ship British HMS Scarborough was reinforced with sloops HMS foe II and HMS leaf and Corvettes HMS Bluebell and HMS heart seized by the end of the day seven submarines shadowed the convoy [Music] the night of October 18 to 19 was ideal for underwater predators with a full moon and calm sea around 2100 u46 fired four torpedoes at cargo ships Convallaria and beetus HMS Leith rushed to find the attacking submarine driving the boat off the ship sails several miles away from the convoy at this moment new 101 torpedo transports pre Kirk the vessel loaded with iron ore quickly sank closer to 2200 you 99 commanded by Otto krishma fired her first torpedo salvo SS Empire miniverse steamed at full speed but it didn't save her one of kretchner's torpedoes struck her engine room and the vessel lost propulsion and started to sink quickly escort ships rushed about among the spreading cargo ships trying to get them together meanwhile u99 made its way to the formation center and struck the convoys ship at point-blank range without even aiming here's how Kretschmer described those events in his battle log 20 to 30 firing from the forward launcher at the heavily loaded transport the torpedo misses but hits another even larger ship of about 7,000 tons the vessel sinks bow first 23:55 launching a torpedo at a large dry cargo ship a hit the bow section is destroyed up to her bridge oo 15 and constantly hearing the explosions of torpedos launched by us submarines destroyers rush about and fire star shells explode from time to time but to no purpose o 138 firing from the forward launcher a hit the vessel sinks o 155 firing a hit the ship sinks in 40 seconds around midnight cargo ship a Syrian with the convoys Commodore on board spotted a German submarine directly in front of them some 90 metres away in an attempt to ram the enemy boat the steamer engaged full speed ahead but soon found herself far from the convoy and without any defences at 122 the vessel was torpedoed by u1 a1 as around 5 0 0 in the morning u 123 used her artillery to finish off transport Clintonian which has been abandoned by the crew the Gunners got so excited that the almost fire to kretchner's u 99 that happened to be nearby at sunrise the submarines left having sunk 20 and damaged 6 of 30 cargo ships the following night convoy HX 79 sailed through that same area it consisted 249 transports and 12 escort ships despite quite strong defenses 5 German submarines managed to sink 12 vessels from the caravan in the course of several hours as a result in three days the Germans had routed to Allied convoys without losing a single submarine in historical literature dedicated to the operations of German u-boats the period from summer of 1940 through the end of spring 1942 is often called happy times then Dern it's his lions as the German propaganda called submariners were the only masters of the Atlantic 1942 was the year of the greatest triumph or the sevens German submarines managed to sink more than 2 million tons of Allied shipping that year at that time the Kriegsmarine had 330 type 7 new boats while it had entered the war with only 57 of them German shipbuilders launched a new 7 every two days nevertheless in 1943 the Allies began to gradually press doughnuts as lions at sea bringing their defeat closer a special anti-submarine command for the Atlantic Ocean was created under Admiral King it dealt only with anti-submarine warfare without any distractions that was the organizational side there was a technical side as well Allied fleet started to receive large numbers of anti-submarine ships they were armed with compact sonar anti-submarine mortars and hydroacoustic stations all these allowed each individual ship to discover submarines chase them down on the basis of their own data and deliver strikes quicker and with more precision so that the German submarines simply didn't have time to evade them defeat in the underwater war wasn't a sudden event but rather a gradual development however it all happened in quite a short period of time all these measures bore great results in May 1943 the Allies sank more German submarines in one day than the transports they had managed to torpedo between 1935 and 1945 709 type 7 submarines were built 546 of them were lost in combat operations and 65 were scuttled by their own crews at the end of the war the fate of the surviving submarines was decided by the Allies at the Potsdam Conference from November 1945 through January 1946 near Scotland operation deadlight was carried out in its course more than a hundred German submarines were destroyed either with explosive charges or by artillery fire from destroyers HMS Onslow and brisk Evita 83 of them were type 7 new boats several surviving ships entered the fleet's of the victorious countries and their allies you nine ninety-five served in the kriegsmarine a little more than six months and was in the northern sea when the war ended in May 1945 the sub surrendered to Norway and served in the Norwegian Navy for the following 15 years with the commissioning of new submarine types you 995 lost its value as a combat unit and the Norwegians transferred the seven to Germany to become a museum ship the type 7 program was one of the most successful German submarine building programs especially when you think of their quantity it's arguably one of the most numerous ship types in the world or the number of units built I believe that even the Liberty class ships were less numerous [Music] type seven submarines are quite controversial some say that they were the best ships of their type others simply call the seven a steel coffin undoubtedly these submarines were very effective but as history proved the development of anti-submarine warfare didn't leave them a single chance of winning the sevens can be compared to a sword it was a threatening and effective weapon in skillful hands until the introduction of gunpowder [Music] [Applause] [Music] you can activate your bonus code up to April 27 don't panic stay with us and don't forget to subscribe as there are more bonus codes to come have a lovely time fair winds and following seas [Music] they were designed to be the best they met enemies face to face endured tragedies and enjoyed victories they went down in history due to the bravery of their crews they are the ships that deserve to be called naval legends in this episode the invulnerable Hornet [Music] while the Pacific campaign was in full swing the US Navy started receiving new essex-class heavy aircraft carriers they became the long-awaited reinforcements that helped the Americans crush the Japanese Imperial fleet one of the most famous ships of this class CV twelve Hornet inherited her name from another aircraft carrier that distinguished herself at the start of the war in April 1942 four months after the attack on Pearl Harbor Americans prepared a bold and daring operation 16 ground-based p25 army bombers had been brought aboard aircraft carrier cv8 hornet which sailed towards the japanese islands that was to let the Japanese know that you bomb our homeland you come close to our homeland we'll come to you they literally sent the the b-25s off of an aircraft carrier something had betted never been done before and it was a one-way mission they didn't have enough fuel to get back the Doolittle Raid inspired Americans and strengthened their belief in victory over Japan in September 1942 cv8 Hornet received serious damage during the Battle of the Santa Cruz islands and sang however his famous name was given to a new aircraft carrier C v12 that was under construction of the Newport News ship the keel was laid in 1942 and a year and a month later in 1943 the ship was underway a remarkable production in one year especially when you realize it was done without computers just slide rules and blueprints 24 of these ships were produced during the Second World War it's amazing to consider that general performance capabilities of USS Hornet total displacements up to 36 thousand tons length up to 266 meters being 45 meters Draft at full load 9.1 metres armament 59 our Lycan cannons Taliban 20 millimeters 10 quadruple mark true Bofors guns caliber 40 millimeters 12 mark 12 dual-purpose guns caliber 127 millimetres armor main belt and beam bulkheads 102 millimeters hangar deck 64 millimeters the air group consisted of four squadrons with up to 103 aircraft in total Hellcat fighters held either dive bombers Avenger torpedo bombers maximum speed up to 33 knots cruising range 15,000 miles so an aircraft carrier is a heavy attack ship it's a floating airfield but at the same time the aircraft carrier itself becomes a main target for enemy attacks it became clear to prevail at sea one must destroy aircraft carriers accordingly in addition to every aircraft carrier being heavily armed with anti-aircraft defenses if they were covered by Allied ships for example USS Hornet had up to sixty guns of various anti-aircraft artillery aboard all anti-aircraft weapons on board all of our weapons were devoted to anti-aircraft the single barrel guns to put between six and ten rounds of explosive anti-aircraft shells in the air per minute so you multiply that times 12 that's a lot of shells in the air we could put up a lead curtain that kept most of the attacking aircraft away the closest a kamikaze fighter ever got was cartwheeling over the deck into the water and never hit us with a bomb or the or the aircraft itself does it even with this colossal number of guns the main anti-aircraft weapon of an aircraft carrier is its fighter aviation [Music] [Applause] the striking force of an aircraft carrier consisted of bombers and torpedo bombers whose range was many times greater than that of the artillery of modern battleships at the time the very first aircraft carriers built after World War one showed that no matter how powerful booster engines were on planes the flight deck was too short for them to gain the necessary speed then the idea appeared that aircraft should have an additional method for acceleration now they can't do it by themselves they have to have a assistance through the catapult system this cable that's hooked up underneath the wing goes down Graff along the front of that shuttle down below and that shuttle runs in this track out to the front of the ship there's a hydraulic engine ram way way down below that is powering this thing and at that point the plane is doing about 120 to 130 knots it's a rather rather exciting start right after takeoff pilots have exhausting work to do the tension was growing with every mile of flight and when they arrived at the target area it would become immense the pilots were aware of the risks they took and flying over the enemy territory and in combat there and then as they got back to the ship they tend to relax because now they feel safe but they really should always remember that one of the most challenging and dangerous things they're going to do is land back aboard this ship an aircraft has a very high speed when landing if it attempts to land by itself it will just roll along the deck and fall off the other edge that's why the question arose how do we stop this this area and there's four of these on either side of the deck where the cables would stretch out and down below decks there's a bunch of equipment that's that's the intention and they know how much the plane weighs it's coming in so they active tension a wire for the weight of that plane and so as it comes in they grab the hook and they will stop before they get to the end of this angle deck here which is only another couple hundred feet beyond this touchdown area once they touch down and stop they retract their hook the cables retracted it's set for the next plane it's sometimes it's often is only thirty seconds between aircraft landing some airplanes were much easier to land on board than others and the particular airplane that I flew the f8 Crusader was a difficult airplane to land ship that we're landing on is moving through the water and we don't always have calm seas or good visibility and such as that so it was necessary to land sometimes at night maybe we're in rough seas and the whole deck is aving and swaying if the ship has to go faster to accommodate the landings on the ship very often stack gas that comes out of the stacks drift across the landing area and it interrupts your smooth flight on board to the to the ship [Music] there was a peculiar Eddie doing a World War 2 when landing on a deck pilots had to drop all ammunition remaining after an attack down into the sea why because the accident rate was high pilots were landing by themselves after all there wasn't any guidance radio navigation nothing at all they had to do it all by themselves they were tired and exhausted if the worst happened at an aircraft crash landed its whole ammunition stock would explode [Music] it's a very precise maneuver to land on these and any interruption of that and result of course in a in a crash or a near crash it's a point of pride that we were able to do that and do it consistently well this ship went through something around two hundred thousand landings before it was decommissioned so it's a it's a round-the-clock process around the clock I lived on board ships like this for a total of 29 months so I'm intimately familiar with the flight deck of the aircraft area [Music] [Music] the Hornet aircraft carrier was commissioned in 1943 the United States had the advantage in the Pacific theater of operations by that time but their enemy was still extremely dangerous a raid by a carrier task force could be compared to a Royal Hunt the Queen is escorted by several dozen ships of different types from fuel transports to battleships crews here at battle stations Scouts are sweeping hundreds of square miles of ocean looking for prey I favorite room on the Hornet this is combat Information Center in this room all of the sensors for the Hornet come into this room all the radars sonar information electronic warfare information it's all fully into this room and they're figuring out what needs to be filtered out and acted upon who passed up to the bridge for it for action a scouting report comes in the enemy was detected that's it the flag officer gives the order to attack what does that involve launching an aircraft or a group of aircraft from a carrier it all starts from the top the speed and direction of the wind [Music] we're now in the areola G office otherwise known as the weather office for the ship and there was a crew here 24 hours a day keeping an eye on the weather big thing for an aircraft carrier is how fast as the wind to the constantly moderate dream at their even sending off weather balloons from them just outside this office to keep track of some of the upper atmospheric conditions there the commanding officer of the task force the flag officer Admiral gives the order prepare for takeoff the flag ship navigator calculates the course necessary for aircraft to take off the aircraft carrier turns around its accordingly the whole formation turns around and that's basic controlled by two enlisted men right here at these stations obviously this is a wheel and this is the ship steering wheel and what's going on is the operator is watching his compass his driver compass repeater he's getting orders from one of the officers out there in the bridge it's steer a certain course [Music] the ships have turned around then the work on the flight deck starts the deck gets cleaned they remove all debris spokes dirt and garbage maybe the semi sir do they get removed too then comes the hangar service unit elevators come up aircraft get rolled out and at the same time the oil and lubricants unit starts to bring fuel hoses and tanks to the upper deck at all these people about two thousand crewmen just to make it possible for 10 aircraft to take off take off everything works everything flies it's a very complex procedure but by 1943 the Americans mastered it as the saying goes they knew it like the back of their hand however not one of the carrier's crew indulged in illusions everyone understood that experience discipline and excellent organization might not be enough to protect against an enemy torpedo Obama the last term I wanted to show you was all the way here in the back and it actually required another combination to get into you had to have top-secret clearance to get into this room now it sounds exciting the information that's being printed on these teletype machines is classified top secret it's a warship if the ship got hit it's being sunk you're in territory you would take the most important security things put them in the in the bags which are weighted very heavy at the bottom with a steel plate and then you'd hit outside and toss it over to me into the ocean and it'll sink and hopefully the other guys don't get at them the attack on Pearl Harbor showed the high efficiency of aircraft carriers in accordance with the traditions of Eastern philosophy Americans learn the lesson that the enemy had taught them and started beating the Japanese at their own game every day commanding officers of task forces resolved issues and set in motion enormous amounts of resources without realizing that they lay the foundations of new naval warfare tactics while schumak away my it cost sophistic in general we are talking about essex-class carriers Hornet is one of them they are attack ships an operation is carried out ammunition and fuel used on the next operation won't start until these ships return to base and given more fuel ammunition food and water as well as new aircrafts and new pilots we are preparing a new general engagement while the Americans are when the day those aircraft and aircraft carriers are ready the day when the Hornet is ready [Music] having participated in dozens of battles Hornet had to pass the final exam in the face of inevitable defeat the Japanese fleet command decided to go all-in battleship yamato was sent to stop the Americans April 7 1945 became a day to remember for Walnut and 7 other u.s. aircraft carriers our ghoul task force 58 was huge it consisted of five heavy and three light aircraft carriers imagine 227 aircraft of the attack wave taking off 227 aircraft attacking everyone found their positions in their air groups this whole wave arrived at the targets orders were coming from ships from the flagship the aircraft attacked they attacked from different directions simultaneously the Japanese couldn't do anything about it [Music] [Music] your battleship yamato was defenseless Carlos against such a well-organized air attack without me think that I wouldn't the strike was delivered the ship was destroyed the aircraft flew back one by one they left their formation found their aircraft carrier landed and all this without hindering other pilots what a destruction of Yamato was the pinnacle of the US Navy's air strike organization this operation put an end to the Japanese Imperial fleet several months later the Empire itself fell as well [Applause] we were at Hunter's Point Naval Shipyard and just finished our sea trials sea readiness trials and World War two ended we became the lead ship in operation magic carpet this is how we got our guys home from over there we didn't have any way to fly them home so all naval ships were pressed into service what they did is they welded 3,000 bunks for the hangar deck of all the aircraft carriers Hornet being the first it's a nine-day trip from the Pacific Theater back to Pearl Harbor where we took our guys we were luxury accommodations we did have a visitor some years ago who was aboard during that time and he told us the story of it and the story was you got one meal a day you were either in your bed and a line to go to the bathroom or a line to get chow that was it that was your routine for nine days and that was the entire ship's crew as well in addition to doing their jobs but the passengers particularly they were happy to be going home but they were fairly bored on the way home the Hornets biography is the history of the Pacific War she took part in the Battle of the Philippine Sea the Battle of Leyte Gulf and the attack on Yamato in April 1945 today the aircraft carrier is one of the most popular attractions in California and a reminder of the heroic past of the US Navy she had an enviable record one of the best records in world war ii she fought in 59 battles and was never hit by a bomb never hit by a torpedo never hit by a kamikaze during all that time she was considered one of the lucky ships in the Navy [Music] [Music] you can activate your bonus code up to April 27 don't panic stay with us and don't forget to subscribe as there are all bonus codes to come have a lovely time fair winds and following seas [Music] [Music] [Music] several more several more at the beginning of the 20th century it was home to about 13 families of huntsmen and fishermen today it houses the main base of the Russian Federation's Northern Fleet and it's not easy to get permission to visit but we haven't come to one of the most secret cities in Russia just out of mere curiosity I'm here to tell you about the k21 submarine in the spring of 1942 command of this ship was entrusted to captain's third rank Nikolay Lunan this was the beginning of one of the most vivid pages in the history of the Russian Navy the Soviet K class submarines nicknamed Katyusha by sailors were created thanks to efforts of Mikhail Buda Natsuki the chief of the submarine department at the Institute of naval shipbuilding at the beginning of 1935 he presented his own project of a cruiser and fleet submarine to the USSR naval command the specifications of this submarine was so promising that even before the final technical project had been approved the decision was made to construct a large series of ships of this class the author of the project which was sometimes nicknamed would need skis Cruiser in his honor managed to create a ship with very extensive and varied combat capabilities that were a perfect match for the Soviet naval doctrine of that time it was supposed that in order to perform the tasks of a fleet submarine she would stay within a specified area and patrol it if an enemy appeared she would let the main Allied forces know about it then using her advantageous situation she would be able to deploy mines in the path of the advancing enemy fleet after the hostile suffered some losses in this minefield the sub would carry out a torpedo attack after this she would disengage and wait for the enemy to sail away from the quadrant thanks to our higher speed she would then move to another position and re-engaged the hostiles there that's the action algorithm of a fleet submarine [Music] simultaneously large submarines were to carry out cruise emissions acting on sea communications in remote areas far from home bases and shores the technical project of a cruiser and fleet submarine was developed and improved for a further two years in December 1936 the first three ships were laid down in Leningrad this series of submarines received the number fourteen in the Navy they were designated as the K pass specifications of K class submarines length ninety seven point six meters beam almost seven point five meters mean draft four meters submerged displacement 2104 tongues the boat has a double hull maximum diameter of the pressure hull five point three meters thickness of the pressure hull 18 to 22 millimeters the submarine is divided into seven compartments the first and seventh torpedo compartments with crew berths the second bow battery compartment the officers mess hall and 5 single cabins for the commanding officers were located on its death the first group of accumulator batteries was installed in the hold the third control room with the conning tower on top of it the artillery magazine found its place in the compartments hold the fourth aft battery compartment the petty officers mess hall and 24 crew bunks were on its deck the second group of batteries was installed in the hold the fifth diesel compartment the sixth electromotive compartment armament 10 533 millimetres torpedo launchers 6 at the bow and four aft with two of them in the superstructure ammunition 24 torpedoes artillery armament 2 100 millimeter B 24 PL dual-purpose guns - 45 millimeter 21 k dual-purpose guns - 7.62 millimeter m1 removable the boat carried 20 EP ground anchor mines developed for fleet submarines which could be deployed with a mining device located underneath the control room powerplant to diesel engines 4200 horsepower each a diesel generator 800 horsepower 2 electric engines 2400 horsepower each two groups of accumulator batteries 240 elements each maximum surface speed 21 knots maximum submerged speed 10.3 knots submergence depth 80 meters maximum depth a hundred meters cruising range at 10 knots surfaced 7500 miles submerged 11.5 miles endurance 50 days maximum time submerged 72 hours crew 66 people the boat had it all along cruising range in high speed powerful torpedo armament with 10 torpedo launchers now moreover she could set mines but in order for a sub to have good underwater maneuverability you need one kind of hull shape to make her agile on the surface you need a slightly different hull shape and if you plan to use the boat as an artillery platform you need a third kind Soviet engineers much to their credit managed to combine all this in one ship however all these advantages came at a price and the price they paid him in the form of the overall lightening of the submarines half moreover when the engineering blueprints were being prepared errors in the calculations for the metacentric height and boats load were discovered which caused stability issues to fix them engineers had to remove the gun shields make the plating of super structure and conning tower railing out of aluminium and reduced the thickness of the outer hull to 6 millimeters the reduction of the outer hull thickness had very negative consequences any explosions of depth charges nearby would cause welded seams to crack watertight fuel tanks would be compromised and leaking fuel would expose the submarines position even rough seas could be enough to severely damage the hull for example after k1 was hit by a force ten storm the superstructure shifted to such a degree that it jammed the capstan and power rows [Music] however these individual technical drawbacks of Katyushas weren't that important compared to the shortage of prepared crews by the end of the 1930s the USSR hadn't managed to organize the fully fledged training of submarine officers directly in naval schools the Navy meanwhile had only two training squads for underwater operations which prepared commanders and specialists for submarines the problem was that these schools weren't able to prepare the necessary number of commanders and specialists at the rate at which the shipbuilding industry was producing new submarines by the summer of 1941 the Soviet submarine fleet included 212 ships 85 in the Pacific Fleet 67 in the Baltic Fleet 44 in the Black Sea Fleet 16 in the Northern Fleet a hundred and eighteen of them why they're under repair or at different stages of construction the remaining 94 were complemented with crews that underwent practical training directly on them the most important thing a crew required time to master all the machinery to this end a training program was developed the training program for submarines adopted in 1938 consisted of 21 tasks here are some of the tasks to controlling a submarine when submerging carrying out submerge maneuvers and surfacing tasks 13 attacking a ship sailing along an alternating course with torpedoes from a long initial range task 21 joined maneuvers of a group of submarines when evading the enemy ships whose crews had complemented all the tasks were considered fully combat ready the highest certification of a submarine was to successfully complete a submerged attack against a high-speed formation of warships with anti-submarine escorts moving along a zigzag path the Soviet submarine fleet had very few certified sums so the reality was that despite having a large number of boats at our disposal only half of them at best were combat-ready only two submarines were fully prepared for combat in the Baltic Sea 19 in the Black Sea and none in the northern fleet on September 17th K 21 was commissioned into the northern fleet and after very tight an intensive combat training she went out on her first war patrol during the autumn of 1941 Kath Usha's had to adapt to sailing conditions in the northern Arctic waters first of all the barents sea tested the endurance of the ship and her crew on every cruise it turned out that surface speed was very much dependent on the sea conditions at force v roughness which is quite characteristic for Arctic latitudes speed drops twofold while during a storm a submarine could list up to 50 to 55 degrees to help submarine stay on course and maintain their position a system of automatic movement stabilization was installed it was able to adjust both course and depth it was also called the autopilot however the electric motors of this system were too noisy and sailors would often disable it during missions and switch to manual control for the German troops in the far north shipments by sea were virtually the only source of supplies that's why these routes were the primary target of Soviet submarines throughout the war however the enemy didn't conduct large ocean convoys near Norwegian shores and the k-class Cruiser submarines were designed to hunt exactly for this type of convoy active transportation was carried out by small groups of ships with modest tonnage that sailed along the shoreline taking cover in fields often these were common motor boats immobilized fishing vessels and it made no practical sense to spend torpedoes on them in September 1941 on their way back from a combat cruise a commanding officer responsible for artillery on k2 suggested firing a blank shot from their main government entering a harbor in honor of their victory later this tradition was adopted by all submarines of the Northern Fleet it worth noting that the k-class suffering scored their first and last victory with artillery fire [Music] in terms of artillery armament Katyusha surpassed all Soviet submarines of that time there are hundred millimeters dual-purpose guns would even sometimes use for anti-aircraft defense at home bases of course these submarines found the main application for their guns at sea and near enemy coasts the events that occurred at the end of 1941 during a combat cruise of k3 when she was helmed by lieutenant commander Malafaia presents a very characteristic example of this on December 3 k3 discovered a small convoy of hammerfest that included the cargo ship alt coach and three submarine chasers the Soviet submarine carried out an attack but failed war torpedoes miss their targets moreover by firing a salvo the boat reveals herself and was immediately spotted by the enemy nests course the German said chase 2k3 at once and in just a couple of minutes dropped around 30 depth charges while evading them catch you sure hit the ground three times and finally laid on the bottom with all noisy mechanisms disabled however the attack continued and each new series of charges with the correct depth setting could have become the last for k3 water started gradually leaking into the pressure hull but enabling the drainage pumps would cause too much noise in this critical situation the captain had one extreme measure there to surface and engage in an artillery battle with her fifth salvo k3 hit the aft of one of the German chasers where the death charges were stalled the ship went under almost instantly the second chaser armed only to a 20-millimeter autocannon hurry to disengage by setting a smoke screen the third ship was too distant and her salvos fell short of the submarine k3 disappeared beyond the horizon before the enemy zombies later on it was found out that an enemy coastal ship had hit a mine cluster deployed by the sub a week prior to those events thus the first mission of k3 in the northern fleet turned out to be very successful this hatch was used to load anchor mines which were stored in the hold in mind and ballast tanks by the way the submarines of this class proved themselves to be excellent mine layers during the war more than half of the enemy tonnage States sank was from their minds but what's most staggering is the audacity of Soviet submarine errs who entered narrow Norwegian fjords with unfamiliar fairways on they're almost 100 metre long ships often they were spotted by lookouts on the coast but cool-headed Lee ignored all of their signals and requests and deployed mine clusters and minefields across enemy communication routes submarine k1 commanded by captain second-ranked McHale of goostin ovitch holds the absolute record of the Northern Fleet for the number of enemy ships destroyed by mines during the course of her service this boat deployed 146 mines that destroyed five transports and two guard ships what's interesting is that the number of confirmed victories of Augustine ovitch surpassed the number of claimed victories a very rare exception in the Soviet underwater fleet post-war studies showed that the effectiveness of submarines was often overstated it wasn't caused by their commanders ambitions but rather the lack or absence of resources and means to verify the results of an attempt when newspapers or radio informed people of the victories of the Soviets of mariners they didn't require verification anymore in 1942 when the Red Army suffered a number of crushing defeats on other fronts the Soviet people badly needed to know that somewhere at least the enemy was getting successfully hit he launched four torpedoes at the German task force at battleship tirpitz ten spare torpedoes were stored in the forward torpedo room and six more were loaded and ready in the launchers initially submarines of this class weren't equipped with a system that enabled bubble-free torpedo launcher which was a substantial tactical disadvantage the enemy could detect a salvo fired from a submarine and perform evasive manoeuvres moreover by firing several torpedoes underwater the boat risked disclosing her position for this reason some soviet captain's fired torpedoes from the maximum effective range on k21 the system of bubble-free fire was installed in march 1942 by the way it was partially nikolay lunians initiative to install the system for bubble-free torpedo launching he was an experienced submarine officer who had completed five war patrols on submarine shark four-two-one and carried out seven torpedo attacks on March the 4th he was appointed as K 21s captain an interesting fact the order giving him command of K 21 came exactly one day after the decree of the Presidium of the Supreme Soviet which awarded him the title of hero of the Soviet Union thus he first became a hero and the very next day was given command of the largest and most powerful submarine in the Russian Navy [Music] everything started with submarine cruisers I mean a plethora of new things were introduced on ships after World War two and the first ships to accommodate such novelties work cruiser submarines hygiene was improved and morgue bunks were installed each sailor Petty Officer midshipman and officer had their own bunks water distillers were installed for the first time two distillers each of which was able to provide around 40 litres of distilled water per hour the most interesting part Stoll showers were installed you know in practice such things as distilling water heating water and everything related to it is just wasted energy almost no commander would agree to spend energy on water and potentially spend the resources required for a torpedo attack or the chance to flee from enemy ships after an attack I mean from submarine chases and destroyers our grandfather's served on submarines in the North in severe and Spartan conditions moreover the submarines of the time didn't even have any heating on June the 18th 1942 k21 started her fifth raid for ten days the submarine cruised along the northern coastline of Norway searching for targets during the night of June 28th Lunan received an order to move to another location close to Cape Nord Caen to cover convoy PQ 17 several days later the Allies learned that a task force of surface ships headed by Tirpitz had set sail the largest German ship was a highly valuable piece on the board and by losing this piece the Kriegsmarine would lose their advantage in the north both opposing parties knew that which was why the German command valued concealment and secrecy most of all while planning their operations the Allies in their turn took all possible measures to detect Tirpitz in the evening of July 4 convoy PQ 17 received the fatal order to spread out the German squadron wasn't aware of this and continued along their previous course by the second half of the next day the squadron had neared Cape nordian the characteristics of the listening sonar installed on k21 weren't that impressive but lunin was lucky enough to have a good sonar operator at 1622 on July the 5th of 1942 he reported to the officer of the watch that he had heard some indistinct noise the noise was getting louder at a coarse angle of 30 degrees on their starboard the commander ordered the sub to turn and extended the periscope several times in order to identify the source of the noise as the boat continued moving towards them dim outlines transformed into large ships escorted by destroyers lunin declared a torpedo attack State on K 21 the enemy was following an irregular course in other words the ships were moving in formation an anti-submarine formation it meant there was a group of destroyers in front of three large ships which were moving in a front formation the task of the destroyers moving ahead of large ships in a front formation is to detect submarines or just detect submarines but force them to change their course either a submarine is detected or she will try to avoid the collision at periscope depth therefore when a submarine submerges and then surfaces she'll have only one chance to attack because the ships are moving at high speed initially lunin planned to attack using the bow torpedo launchers but at 1750 it raised the periscope and saw that the squadron had changed the course this made a torpedo attack from the bow launch is impossible the commander made a decision to launch the aft torpedoes a [Music] lack of experience in attacking fast-moving targets with strong escorts imperfect tracking devices errors in analyzing target motion and the risk of being revealed with an additional extension of the periscope all these and other factors made it harder to prepare a torpedo attack nevertheless Noonan made a second attempt a risky one to launch torpedoes at a receding target from an obtuse angle according to his calculations the distance was maximum but acceptable at a particular moment k21 was surrounded by the escort ships and could have been detected lunin gathered all the data for a launch extended the periscope and waited for the target to enter the computer zone the parameters he had indicated that the attack would be successful he launched four torpedoes at the German task force at battleship tirpitz immediately after the torpedo salvo k21 submerged the 30 meters and left the attack area at full speed approximately an hour later a radiogram was received at the Coastal Command HQ the Northern Fleet at 1,800 latitude 71 degrees 25 north longitude 23 degrees 40 East attacked enemy ships comprising battleships turrets and share and eight destroyers attacked battleship Tirpitz earth two blasts commander of K 21 meanwhile in the north far away from K 21 German aviation and submarines were pillaging convoy PQ 17 Soviet destroyers left the northern fleet bases and the aircraft took off from the coastal aerodrums to search for the enemy the radiogram from lunin was still being decoded on the coast which is why nobody knew the exact location of the German task force nevertheless everyone understood that they had to be detected at any cost [Music] at 1916 the German squadron was detected by the truth of the l4 airplane from the 2nd guards composite air regiment so their weather conditions obstructed the flight low clouds and fog made it almost impossible to detect the enemy ships but the persistence of Soviet pilots in fulfilling their mission was rewarded the pilot noticed a small gap between the clouds plotted the course in that direction and found himself right above the enemy forces the Scout immediately sent a message about detecting a German squadron comprising 11 ships and following a course of 65 degrees as a speed of 10 knots the error in determining the squadron speed played a crucial part in the coming events the text of the decoded radiogram from K 21 and data from the reconnaissance aircraft led to the conclusion that the speed of the German squadron had been reduced because one of the ships had received serious damage it's proved that lunians attack had been successful after our British allies received the message about detecting the German task force they radioed it in such a way that guaranteed the Germans would intercept it and they did intercept the message in two hours and decoded it the message was decoded both by the task force and on the mainland the German command saw the message is a reason to abort the operation that message had basically eliminated the secrecy it was the top priority of the German command they realized that they had been discovered moreover there were messages from aviation and submarines stating that the convoy had been dispersed was being successfully destroyed by aviation and submarine forces so the capital ships had nothing to do that in the evening of July 8 the Soviet Information Bureau transmitted a message saying that the submarine under the command of Captain second-ranked Nikolai lunan had scored two torpedo hits on German battleship Tirpitz the news about the torpedo attack on the largest German ship was published not only in the main Soviet papers but a corresponding note was also released in the Foreign Press this was why the following day when k21 arrived at the base the whole world was already aware of their heroic deed of the submarine and her commander by the fall of 1942 after the events of the fifth raid had been reviewed in detail nikolai Lunan and his submarine k21 were decorated with the order of the red banner over time that attack had created a plethora of speculations and assumptions and finally became a legend that still causes many arguments [Music] it's all clear from the historical perspective the specific facts which are now available to everyone who's eager to study them undeniably suggest that the attack took place but as it was unsuccessful however the attack itself was a heroic deed in any case l'union did everything he could and everything he had been taught the first torpedo attack failed but he still took a risk and attempted a second attack that was the first and only attack by our submarines on large enemy surface ships in November 1943 Nikolai lunin became commander of the first submarine division of the northern fleet six months later he was sent to the military naval academy he graduated from the Academy after the war ended submarine k21 had seven more war patrols primarily for laying mines at the time of her last raid the conning tower of the submarine was decorated with the number 17 the number of her victories as a matter of fact the combat cruises of submarine k21 ended on April 12 1944 she required midlife repairs but after being docked she didn't take part in any further military actions until the end of the war that might have saved the life of the submarine and her crew because she was the only submarine out of six boats of her class that survived the war after being decommissioned from the Navy in 1954 k21 was converted into a training facility where submariners practiced survivability skills in 1981 the Military Council of the fleet proposed to make submarine k21 a memorial to honor all the submariners who had died during the war four compartments were rebuilt as a museum so just the for the torpedo room for word battery room and control room with the conning tower remained almost unchanged the victories of submariners from the Northern Fleet are sacred to me no matter what anyone says the numbers can be exaggerated or underrated to my mind it would be an insult not only to me but to the veterans who are no longer here with us when someone who only read the numbers would say come on how many ships did you sink you say you just sailed about at sea and that's it in wartime huh in the conditions of the North a patrol by any submarine is already a heroic deed because their crews always left the base with a one-way ticket they never knew whether they would return or not [Music] so my cell says that it's not hard to understand the idea of the memorials creators a famous warship the only preserved k-class boat of the northern fleet United with the coast that she once defended it symbolizes the memories of the heroic deeds of Soviet submarine errs that are preserved by today's sailors and the connection which unites them [Music] [Applause] you can activate your bogus code up to April 27 don't panic stay with us and don't forget to subscribe as there are more bonus codes to come have a lovely time fair winds and following seas [Music] you

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Keywords: World of Warships, Wargaming, Battleships, Captain Bad Advice, Warships, ww2, how to play wows, wows, yamato, bismarck, hood, game about warships, game about naval combats

Id: ZmIvnz7I0Fo

Length: 209min 30sec (12570 seconds)

Published: Sat Apr 25 2020