The Evolution of the Warship - Heavy Metal | Naval History (Full Free Documentary)

so [Music] [Music] [Music] 19 000 tons of floating destruction this is the most deadly weapon man has ever made capable of destroying an entire country a single nuclear-powered missile submarine is quite possibly the ultimate warship the story of the modern warship flows through a sea of steel and iron back to a time of canvas and oak until the advent of steam power these ingenious constructions of wood sailcloth rope and tar were always the most powerful and potent weapons on earth like their high-tech descendants they were a lethal fusion of design propulsion and firepower in essence a warship is a machine for projecting power warships have always been mobile platforms from which to hurl trouble at an enemy be it in the form of missiles or iron cannonballs [Applause] [Music] shrouded in a chemical mist the remains of henry viii's mary rose are slowly revealing the mysteries of the story of warships and their guns the recovery of the mary rose from the mud off portsmouth was like the discovery of king tut's tomb a window when an ancient world was thrown open [Music] one of the most exciting things that the excavation of mayor rose has provided is actually the clues to what these wrought iron guns are because all all that we knew about for the whole of the period before the mary rosen in fact the beginnings of the 16th century are names funny names of guns on inventories in the names of things like port peace fowler sling and the fact they're made of raw iron the mary rose is listed as having 91 guns of those 39 are big guns mounted on carriages a mixture of 15 of the newer cost bronze muzzle loaders and then the rest being taken up by the wrought iron breech loading guns which is inherently an older fashion type of technology in the most ancient of guns the barrels were made by welding wrought iron bars together and binding them with hoops they could be as lethal to their gun crews as to their enemies when they fired the staves could burst blasting chunks of red-hot iron into the men the muzzle loading cannon were cast like bells with molten bronze and fired balls of iron and stone she had 20 hail sharp pieces which had a rectangular boar and fired particularly nasty tiny little pellets of iron square dice of iron and that was again to scour the decks at close range and then closer than that still she carried 50 handguns for for basically sharp shooting and then 250 bows of you and then if you got even closer and had hand-to-hand combat there were 150 pikes and 150 bills this complicated mixture of weapons defined the medieval warship before the mary rose ships did not carry guns but a cargo just as deadly then in the northern seas came a ship feared throughout all the known world from the 7th to the 11th century the norse longships brought death and destruction wherever they landed with as many as 80 oars and a top speed of about 15 miles an hour they moved much faster than any army and could land a horde of warriors on any unguarded seashore [Music] as amphibious assault craft they went unmatched until the 20th century they were europe's first ocean-going ships with a strong hull of clinker-built overlapping planks they had an awkward steering ore and little cargo space their sail was useful only in a following or side wind and they were often propelled by human muscle but they had no shelter for the crew so they weren't used in the dark northern winter in the summer though they carried the norsemen to spread terror and devastation throughout england and europe the norman invasion of england in 1066 was the last great viking raid william the conqueror's army and its horses crossed the channel in longships after the norsemen settled down their longships were used less for war than for trade over the years the trading ship evolved into a sturdy merchant vessel called the cog the cog can be called the ship from which all wooden ships descend it displaced up to 300 tons of water at a strong keel stout ribs and room for cargo and shelter for the crew unlike the norse longships it had a flat stern which supported a proper rudder it still had a single mast and sail and its hull retained the traditional overlapping planks cogs had no fixed design shipwrights who worked according to local tradition built them without formal drawings [Music] when they were used for war like the viking ship their main function was to transport troops if there was a fight at sea the warriors fought a land battle on floating platforms [Music] sometimes they threw soft soap onto enemy decks hoping the enemy would slip and fall since the soldiers wore armor swimming was not an option cogs were later rigged with towers for archers and stone throwers but the ships themselves still were not seen as weapons in their own right that had to wait for two major developments that changed the story of both ships and how they fought the cog fused its heavy frame with a more supple mediterranean design the overlapping hull planks gave way to butt end or carvel planking this greatly reduced the friction between the hull and the water combined with more masts and sails the cog evolved into the caravel the ship that discovered the world these handy little ships like the matthew which took john cabot to newfoundland were the traitors of the open seas during the 15th century square sails on the fore and main mass and a latine sail on the rear or misenmast had become the standard rig allowed for easier maneuvering and sailing into the wind crossing the atlantic with columbus these were the ships that made the age of exploration [Music] exploration fueled conquest and conquest brought riches the new-found wealth demanded protection on the open seas thus was born the warship like the mary rose she was a carrick a cargo ship that was basically a cog with more masks and permanent for and after castles for attack and defense ships now were loaded with the one thing that changed them forever gunpowder a noxious mixture of one part sulfur six parts salt peter and two parts charcoal was first described in the west in 1242 its introduction from china revolutionized warfare on the land and at sea by the time the mary rose was launched in 1512 the castles and rails bristled with small anti-personnel guns the warship had been born but the design of ships was not a science and the mary rose had fatal flaws the larger guns had become so heavy that in order to maintain stability ships had to be wider at the water line than they were at the top deck the guns had to be placed lower down in the ship during her life mary rose became a floating test bed for tudor innovation a second gun deck was added closer to the water line and this entailed yet another stroke of the double-edged sword of technological change [Music] gun ports and these were her undoing [Music] replacing the water and mud from her 400-year soak the chemicals sprayed on the mary rose will preserve her remains and her story she sank doing battle with the french just outside portsmouth harbor some 35 years after she was built and launched so july 19 1545 she was actually defending portsmouth harbor against the french attack she fired at least three guns from her starboard side and was turning to bring the port side guns to bear dipped her perhaps newly built gum ports too close to the water and sank on her starboard side with the loss of all 415 with the exception of perhaps 35 crew on board well the mary rose was about 45 meters long and 12 meters wide the deck height is actually higher than the tallest man a six foot person can actually stand between the decks so in many cases it's quite luxurious as far as as space is concerned for operating the guns and this was partially because she was the first generation of warships and built out of a tradition of building cargo vessels so the height of the decks is actually built for cargo rather than guns and in time it was decided that it really didn't matter you could crouch down and fight with with the guns and then get another layer of guns on top of it so you could maximize your gunnery power by reducing the height of decks the carrick was a formidable ship but its high forecastle caught the wind and like a badly set sail pushed the bow down and away from the wind john hawkins the elizabethan privateer and pioneer slave trader discovered this to his peril when his carrick could not outmaneuver spanish ships and he was captured and thrown into prison [Music] when he was released he set about changing the shape of the carrick by reducing the size of the forecastle the result was the galleon like the golden hind in which sir francis drake circumnavigated the world and terrorized the spanish mane drake was a privateer a semi-legal buccaneer licensed by elizabeth to attack and plunder spanish possessions when he had returned to england in 1580 he immediately asked if elizabeth was still alive because without her license drake was simply a pirate the money that drake brought back was enough for the queen to use some of it just a part of it to repay the national debt and the balance of the money was really the seed money if you like for the start of what became the empire the english empire the galleon design was soon adopted all over europe english mariners called carrick's high charged ships and galleons low charged ships grasping after spanish gold the elizabethan privateers launched onto the open battleground of the seas the golden hind had less guns than the mary rose but more than enough for the work she had to do she carried 14 minions which are about a five pound cannon and another four falcons which are firing a slightly smaller shot probably about three and a half pound shot and another four small pateras which are little boarding cannons which fired shrapnel so the cannons that the golden hind had a board had a range of up to about 2000 yards in in ideal conditions using the role of the ship in order to maximize your range the idea was to disable a ship not to sink it so the cannons would be used to fire at the rigging at the sails in order to disable the ship so that they could get alongside and so the marines and the and the men aboard and the archers the crossbow men could take the other ship as a prize life aboard the ship was hard and for the sailors they lived pretty well all their waking hours and their their sleeping hours on the gun deck they weren't allowed up on deck basically because the operation the ship would have been hindered by lots of people who weren't needed uh in order to sail the ship the half day which is the command deck the officers would have been allowed up there and that leaves only the four deck and the main deck for the sailors and sir francis drake just wouldn't have wanted them all milling around they had to stay below until they were needed the sailors of of the time of sir francis drake were pretty superstitious um they feared things like sea monsters and because of that they would the they would have perhaps a lion as we have on the top of the rudders so that any sea monsters coming up behind the ship would be scared off they also feared uh ghosts in the rigging they would always rub the knights heads on the deck because they believe that the the two carved heads on the main deck to protect them as they went up aloft the spanish used their naval technology to carry their gold the english used theirs to steal it the english galleons were built for war not to carry treasure home from the new world they had less cargo space smoother underwater lines and were lighter and more nimble this agility played a crucial role in 1588 when philip ii of spain sent an armada of 130 carricks and galleons north they were bound for calais where they were to pick up the spanish army then fighting the dutch and take it across the channel to conquer england the english met the armada off plymouth with 94 ships drake led one of the wings made up of privateers like himself and martin frobisher they were legends in the making [Music] the english formed two groups upwind or to the windward of the spanish the spanish were in the leeward or downwind position contrary to legend the smaller english ships did not race in and get under the high spanish guns and fire at point-blank range if they tried it most would have been shot to pieces before they got near and any that did get alongside a spanish ship would have been overwhelmed by its massive complement of soldiers and sailors instead one after the other they sailed downwind and shot from relatively safe distances and angles this infuriated the spanish but did little damage cannon technology was still limited to the point that the english could fire a large gun only once or twice an hour the spanish could fire only once or twice a day the spaniards build these ships with these huge cannons almost for nothing when you look at the contents of the spanish and mala ships and compare this to the continents of the ships that were employed by the english in the spanish hamana campaign the english put out much many more rounds of shots than the spaniards did so there you are with huge ships huge cannons and maybe a few cannonballs were fired which is a very bizarre thing to realize archaeological evidence also has indicated that there was a miscommunication as far as the loading of the ship is concerned cannonballs did not always fit the muzzle of the cannon absolutely astounding features that of course would be absolutely out of the question nowadays were done in those days 1588 despite this higher rate of fire it was almost impossible to sink a wooden ship without extensively holding it below the water line or setting it ablaze [Music] seamen feared drowning they feared ghosts but most of all they feared fire the most dangerous english attack on the armada came after it had lumbered down the channel and was off calais taking advantage of its windward position the english sent eight fire ships against the armada the second best thing wooden ships do is burn the flames could have easily engulfed the entire tightly packed fleet the spanish had no choice but to cut their anchor cables and flee scattered and almost out of ammunition the spanish regrouped and were forced to try to get home by sailing around the british isles they went north and lost half their ships to violent weather and the fierce rocky coasts of scotland and ireland the battle had been the first major clash between ocean-going warships now war was not limited to the boundaries of land but would be anywhere the winds would blow in the next century the english fought the dutch for control of the world's ocean-going trade their struggle saw the creation of navies and the emergence of warships as a nation's premier weapon seamen now manned the guns to the art of sailing they added the craft of war well the great naval power of the 17th century unquestioned by the dutch especially in the first half of the 17th century it's estimated that by about 1640 1650 about half of all the economic activity in the world takes place in the lowlands and largely through antwerp and rotterdam and other places propelled by the winds of trade the galleon evolved into the dutch east indiamen the long voyages to the east indies demanded a tough fast ship the spices and fabrics that these ships brought back were so valuable that huge fortunes could be carried in relatively little cargo space it resulted in a lasting design in fact the fundamental design of the ocean-going merchantmen like the amsterdam remained essentially the same from the early 16th century to the coming of iron steamships more than 200 years later [Music] a ship like the amsterdam carried some 325 soldiers and sailors twice as many as were needed because half the ship's company was expected to die from shipboard and tropical diseases before they came home [Music] at the end of 1748 the newly built amsterdam spent about three months loading cargo in that time 50 of the crew died of the plague then when the ship set sail for the indies a storm drove it ashore near hastings england where it sank into the mud never to sail again the merchantmen had their counterpart in the navies that were formed in the dutch wars the sovereign of the seas launched in 1637 was both a gaudy symbol of english ambition and a remarkably innovative warship as well as having three gun decks housing 100 cannons she had unusually tall masts crowned with radically new sails which enabled her to maintain cruising speed and moderate winds she cost 72 000 pounds in today's terms the price of three aircraft carriers well over three billion dollars the tax that charles the first imposed to pay for his navy was one of the sparks of the english civil war which resulted in him not only losing his ships but also his head the sovereign of the seas was an active warship for 60 years then in 1697 she was destroyed by a fire caused by a careless cook's candle [Applause] during the dutch wars the english developed a method of fighting at sea that took advantage of the improving chemistry of gunpowder and the increasing power of naval cannon the heavily gunned ships would form up in the line to concentrate the blasts of their devastating broadsides from then on large battleships were called ships of the line a line of ships in the windward position was always more maneuverable also the thick smoke from their cannons would blow toward the leeward line blinding it the english admirals went up against the street fighting tactics of the greatest admiral of his day michiel de reuter on his 80 gun flagship the seven provinces he taught them several harsh lessons including the advantages of rapid cannon fire [Music] a replica of the seven provinces is now being built to the batavia wharf in lelistat holland with modern tools but like the original without formal plans i i know how she make it in this time she has no drownings she made it only from his head first in england she made drownings in the 70th century but not in holland she make it only from his head you start first with the frame uh from the stern force turn after stern kill in this system the dutch make first the planks of the skin and after that she put this pants in and he did it on the same way and when you have the skin and a little bit from the hole then you you put more spans in and then you make round lots and you can look how the ship was formed and then after that a deck and next deck and so you go on and on the original seven provinces was 163 feet long and 43 feet wide it carried 80 guns on three decks and it was made almost entirely of oak over the next 80 years the evolution of the ship of the line continued in britain they were made with more sails and more guns until they reached their culmination in the most famous wooden warship in the world [Applause] hms victory is undoubtedly the most renowned british ship of the line her keel was laid in chatham in 1759 and she continues to be the oldest ship in the royal navy the basic warship design hadn't changed very much over about 120 years when victory was first built however the victory herself does show some innovations one major innovation which became standard in 1783 was the sheathing of ships hulls with copper this slowed the rate at which seaworms rotted the planks and barnacles and kelp could grow on a hull copper-plated ships were faster and needed less time in dockyards being repaired this model of hms minerva may have been built to show the new plating to the admiralty and the king [Music] there's well over 9 000 copper plates were put onto the bottom of this ship so again hours per plate you are talking about a skin on the bottom of the ship that weighed something in the region of 17 and a half tons copper sheathing then became standard in most navies the warship became the focal point for britain's technological innovation they needed crews that were highly specialized they traveled farther and faster than any other creation of man but at enormous cost it's estimated that in the 18th century the largest british capital firm a mill in the north country for example would be capitalized at around twelve thousand pounds sterling uh but you've got one ship of the line that cost about eighty thousand pound sterling to build that's not maintenance afterwards at the height of napoleonic wars are about 150 british ships of the line in service there's nothing comparable in pre-industrial europe to the maintenance of a navy victory displaced over 3 000 tons of water her timbers and her hull which is about 20 inches thick needed the wood of 100 acres of oak trees her rigging runs some 20 miles of rope building and maintaining these ships required massive dockyards like a chatham on the river medway today it's an industrial museum but its largest structure the ropery is still in use still making rope for the victory and ships of all kinds until steam power was introduced here in 1836 the work was done by hand and when they wound several ropes together to make a 20-inch cable 400 men were brought in from all over the dockyard to pull the hemp lines tight and keep them straight when it was built the ropery was the longest brick building in europe the ships built at chatham helped make the british empire and spread the english language throughout the world sailors themselves added color to the language to go to the bitter end meant to use the whole length of an anchor cable a ship was said to have been pooped when its stern was engulfed by a large wave that came charging up from behind scuttlebutt taken aback and by and large but a few more of the terms still used another naval expression is going great guns and around 1800 it was common for sailors to call the biggest guns heavy metal a man of war like the victory had but one singular purpose to carry guns a main armament 104 guns comprised 32 pounders on the lower gun deck 24 pounders on the middle gun deck 12 pounders on the upper gun deck quarter deck and two here on the folks who behind me and also two 68 pounder carrying aids the ranges of these guns vary to the 32 pounders would have a maximum range of about one and a half miles 24 pounders about one and a quarter 12 pounders between three quarters to about a mile behind me the 68 pounder this had a range of 1280 yards maximum with a 5 degree elevation or point blank 480 yards a well-trained crew could load and fire a gun in about 90 seconds the explosion from the victory's broadside could hurl almost two tons of iron to an enemy ship's side that's like throwing a humvee through a wooden wall there's a very vivid description at the battle of capes and vincent where this ship fired a series of very quick very well-aimed um very professional broadsides into a spanish ship that was trying to break through the line um and and get it to the victory and the description is that the spanish ship's sides shuddered with the impact of the shot they could see these these heavy wooden sides actually shuddering with the sheer power of the shot and of course some of them would punch through sending up clouds of lethal splinters as always in the sail era the object was to capture a ship not sink it the government bought captured ships and the entire crew had a share of the prize money accordingly besides cannonballs they also fired bar and chain shot to cut down enemy sails rigging and crews the carnage on a gun deck was such that they were painted red to hide the blood the preferred fighting distance was half a pistol shot or about 100 yards if you were on board the victory actually firing the broadside it was probably even more horrendous if you can imagine being on the middle gun deck of this ship so that you're firing a 24 pounder yourself above you on the deck above is a 12 pounder rattling in and out and firing and crashing over your head below you is a 32 pounder doing the same around you is the swirl of the smoke and the contorted bodies of your friends as you pull the gun in and out to load it and re-fire it for centuries guns were fired by applying a slow burning match to the touch hole and accuracy was mainly a matter of practice and luck in the late 18th century the flintlock enabled a gunner to fire at the moment he chose the next evolutionary step in canon technology was the carinade which fired a 68-pound shot over short distances it was ideal for close-in fighting and increasing the carnage on the killing fields of the warship's decks there were various advantages to the carinade the first thing is it is in comparison to its counterpart it is a much lighter weapon and therefore could be mounted in the hot higher parts of the ship without detriment to the ship's stability but at the same time it also could deliver a much heavier shot from that vantage point a 32-pounder gun would actually fire a velocity of 1 600 feet per second and the effect of that shot going through the hull of an enemy warship it was a punch straight through the ship's side whereas by firing at a lower velocity the shot emitting from this gun would actually grind and make more damage within the hull as it passed through causing greater splinters and damage to the ship by any standards many warships were floating hells but these were hard times and hard people with none of our expectations even so most warships were relatively happy communities of men who took great pride in their ship and their skills victory had a crew of more than 800 men what you have to remember is is this ship operates purely on manpower you need 260 men to man the capstan to raise the anchors you need nearly all hands when attacking the ship you need seven to fourteen men at each gun to pull these weights around and to ensure that you had men that were capable of undertaking this day-to-day work then they had to have a very high calorific diet and these chaps were actually getting somewhere in the region between three and five thousand calories a day if you look at the quantity of food that was issued to each man on a weekly basis these men were getting two pounds of beef and two pounds of pork this was certainly a lot more than their counterparts on shore would have been receiving the health of the british cruise was one of the key factors in the british success at the end of the 18th century it was the fact we kept our crews healthy that made us so successful [Music] the british and the french ships were the same in fact the royal navy used many captured french ships and admired their superb sailing qualities but for much of the napoleonic wars they were anchored in safe harbors frozen by the british blockade british ships and crews stayed at sea for months on end they developed replenishment at sea a tactic used with deadly efficiency by doing its u-boats two centuries later the ships of nelson's navy were battered more by the pounding seas than by french cannon yet at the same time their crews were learning to sail and to fight in all kinds of weather and the best of them grew confident enough to improvise when it counted most the royal navy seamanship was put to the bloody test in a dramatic battle off cape st vincent portugal in 1797 where the legend of nelson was born 15 british ships of the line under sir john jervis attacked a spanish fleet of 27 battleships on their way to join the french fleet at brest jurvis on the victory cut through the spanish fleet then turned to engage the windward division which could have either escaped or fallen upon the rear of the british line but horatio nelson aboard hms captain turned out of the line and intercepted and captured two spanish ships boarding one after another an astonishingly valiant action it has long been said that it was also a gross breach of fighting discipline more likely nelson did just what jervis wanted and the evidence for that is quite clear jervis at the end of the battle received nelson on the quarter deck of this ship the victory which was his flagship of the battle and when nelson came towards him jervis who was a very undemonstrative man took him in his arms and hugged him that was an expression of how much he approved of what nelson had done nelson like all sensible people expected to die in battle he knew that he was exposing himself to enormous danger remember that by this time great ships like this the victory had been around for over a hundred years the technological change that had happened in a ship like this was very small indeed and so it's possible for literally generations of sailors to learn the art of sailing a ship and fighting in a battle they weren't to know that but within 30 years of the end of the napoleonic wars the art of harnessing the wind would give way to the science of steam the poignancy of this transition was caught forever in turner's painting of the 98 gun temeraire which had been the second ship in nelson's line at trafalgar being towed by a steam tug up the thames to a wrecker's yard [Music] trafalgar was the last major deep sea naval battle for 100 years by then warships were made of steel and fueled by coal and oil yet for a short time the fate of nations could still depend on the success of wooden ships [Music] one striking example is the battle of lake erie in 1813 when the united states and britain were fighting for control of what is now ohio michigan and ontario the issue was decided on september the 10th when a british flotilla was defeated by a somewhat larger american squadron led by commodore oliver perry aboard the 18 gun brig niagara lake erie was the last british sea battle of any significance in the age of sale steeped in the traditions of two centuries the royal navy did not take easily to technological change they resisted the adoption of steam power for several decades in 1845 they were still debating whether the paddle wheel or the screw propeller was the best means of powering a steam driven ship the issue was decided by a race and a tug of war between two steam frigates of equal horsepower one with a propeller the other a paddle wheel the screw propeller won decisively in 1860 the evolution of naval design became a revolution and her name was warrior an ironclad steam battleship as the champagne was broken over her bow she instantly made every other warship of her time obsolete armed with 68 70 and 110 pound guns her explosive shells would obliterate any challenger her defense was a citadel of four and a half inches of iron backed by eight inches of teak she was a fortress afloat yet still equipped to repel borders on the cusp of technological change her single expansion steam engine was for use only in battle and when the wind died she still relied on the timeless power of the wind when they changed from steam to sail power it took 400 men an hour and a half to raise her propeller to prevent it from dragging against the water although she remained on the royal navy active list till 1923 the warrior never saw battle and rarely went too far from the british isles her primary function was to patrol the english channel constantly reminding france and the rest of europe who ruled the waves britain was the only nation with the industrial capacity to build and maintain such ships the firepower that the warrior could unleash against any ship in the world made her the world's first deterrent it was the start of an arms race that continues today the warrior is the direct antecedent of the nuclear ballistic missile submarine and the nuclear-powered aircraft carrier [Music] they are part of a massive deterrent that no one could have imagined in 1860 but their kinship with the warrior doesn't stop there the coal and oil bunkers of the warrior have been replaced by nuclear reactors nuclear fission heats the water to generate the steam that actually turns their propellers these are steamboats too and still the most decisive means of projecting power in the world for centuries the warship has been the ultimate expression of the strength and economic might of a nation it has been the vehicle which kings emperors and presidents have used to exercise their will and their power self-contained and able to sail wherever the winds blow the warship under sail was a symphony of beauty made of canvas and oak it was an object of majesty and threat harnessing the unseen forces of tide and wind it was the highest expression of man's technical dreams with the coming of steam wind powder and wood were replaced by coal cordite and iron warships represented the cutting edge of the technology of their day they continue to be among the world's most innovative costly and most certainly deadly creations of man if you're unlucky very unlucky this ship will be coming soon to a theater of war near you the uss zumwalt dd-21 is designed to control not only the sea but the land adjoining it she is called a land attack destroyer the weapons of war at sea reach farther than ever before she is a definitive statement of modern technology and some don't even call her a ship warships are now called platforms that will fight in what is called battle space war at sea has become a three-dimensional exercise the land attack destroyer is a revolution in science stealth and steel and bears a remarkable resemblance to a ship launched over 150 years ago the confederate ship virginia and the union ship monitor were as revolutionary as the land attack destroyer but they were limited to coastal waters her true ancestor was nicknamed the black snake the iron ship hms warrior launched in 1860 her cannons fired explosive shells and were protected behind walls of four and a half inches of iron backed by another eight inches of teak she instantly made every other warship in the world obsolete [Music] this was the classic deterrent that this really was the trident submarine of victorian times because it was built as a deterrent against the french and they never came out into the channel again the warrior was the bridge between two types of technology she was the last of a line of warships that began with the english galleons of elizabeth the first the sail-powered man of war had not changed its basic design at armament for 300 years generations of men learned the bitter art of fighting under canvas battles at sea were ferocious encounters where ship battered ship at close range with cannon fire it was a subtle a method of fighting as a man bludgeoning with a club it ended with boarding and brutal hand-to-hand fighting with cutlasses axes pikes and pistols the industrial revolution changed all that it brought cannonball stopping metal hulls greater speed and more powerful guns [Music] new explosive shells could turn the stoutest oak ship into a pyre of blazing kindling the guns forced ships to fight at a longer range making hand-to-hand combat just a fond memory the warrior was the first ship to create a citadel an armored section of the ship where the crew of 705 were protected from the fuselage of enemy explosives [Music] between her classic stern gallery and figurehead and directly beneath the citadel were her coal-powered boilers their steam drove a huge double-acting single expansion engine one of the most significant advances in warship design change comes slowly however and she was still rigged with sails you can only put so much coal on board a ship and when that coal's run out you can no longer rely on steam so although the navy is often accused of conservatism in terms of hanging on to masts and spas and and sales when steam is already a reality in the strategic sense they had to be very careful about disposing of sales quite simply because um you could have the wind pretty well whenever you wanted but you only had so much coal to steam with warrior was so large and unwieldy it took 16 men at four wheels to steer her in rough weather when under steam the ship was commanded from a forward bridge closing the chapter on officers commanding ships from the quarter deck like most naval innovation it was rooted in practicality the smoke from the funnels made it impossible to see anything from the quarter deck when switching from steam to wind the funnels were lowered into the hull to minimize wind resistance and since the 36 ton propeller would now be a drag in the water it was lifted clear it took all the strength of 400 men to raise it her main armament was the armstrong gun it had a crew of 18 and could be loaded and fired in 56 seconds well they they fired solid shot but they also fired a range of shells as well they've had shells that went off adjacent to the ship they also fired shells with the full of molten metal the armstrong gun was if you like the next transition in the development of the gun unfortunately the the ones that were on this ship were of a very early type and they were quite unreliable i mean they actually used to blow the breach out so so the the aim originally was in fact to equip the whole ship with armstrong's but they only ended up with 10 and this mark was removed quite quickly and replaced by you know the next generation of gun the next generation of guns was used in the first significant fight between steam-driven ironclads in march 1862 at hampton roads virginia during the american civil war on the first day the captured union ship merrimack now the css virginia rammed the union sloop cumberland and sank her with her ram embedded in the cumberland's hull the virginia almost sank with her but the ram broke off and the virginia returned to battle sank another ship with gunfire and retired the next day she came out to finish off the union fleet and found herself facing the monitor a new ironclad equipped with two muzzle loading guns in a revolving turret the two ships bounced cannonballs off each other for most of the day doing little damage to the world's navies it seemed that since these two armored ships had been unable to damage each other with gunfire probably the only way for one armored ship to sink another was to ram it the industrial revolution accelerated the use of technology and warship design just a few years after the battle of hampton roads the dutch with their long seafaring tradition were commissioning the buful launched in 1868 she originally was fitted with masts and sails and had a sumptuous suite for the officers following the american lead it has two turret guns and a deadly ram bow one of the oldest maritime weapons very shortly after warrior you see ships that that look not totally dissimilar to her which which have a sort of cupola system of midships which allow a very limited form of of of coaxial fire but of course it's not really until you can get rid of masts and spars and sails that the concept of a of a properly constituted turret warship can come along by the time the uss olympia was commissioned in 1895 naval warship design was based on a hybrid of steam and sail propulsion turrets and more powerful longer-range guns have been appearing almost yearly in response armor and armor-piercing shells have been developing just as rapidly and a new terror had emerged the torpedo one of the most feared weapons at sea the olympia's primary armament is two eight-inch turret guns ten five-inch guns and six torpedo tubes since the civil war the power of guns had increased enormously and she was built to fight at long range but still showing the lessons learned from hampton roads olympia was built with a ram bow warships were about to enter an age where they would become not only the most expensive and powerful weapons for fighting wars almost the cause of them the end of the victorian era brought a staggering range of technological changes in warship design and armament one of the big developments in in naval artillery at the end of the 1880s was the advent of the quick firing gun in which you had fixed ammunition with the round and the propellant charge made up to look like basically a big bullet and you could just ram it home and close the breach fire it off and it would kick the shell out [Music] olympia led the technical revolution in more ways than with guns and armor it had electricity first time they tried it they didn't know really how to use it had refrigeration everybody knew you could use that but nobody had successfully installed it designed to cruise the great expanses of the pacific ocean olympia was originally rigged with sails and carried extra coal bunkers to give her the necessary range coal was part of the armor system on the ship it wrapped the engines in boilers so that as the shells came through and exploded their explosive force was used to pulverize the coal so the coal absorbing it protected the engines and also the men aboard like most new warships olympia had armor decking above the boilers and engines shells fired from a distance had high arcing trajectories and so when they neared their targets they were falling almost straight down toward the deck not the hull [Music] as a cruiser olympia had been built to serve as a scout a raider and a heavy duty escort her light armor was to enable her to outrun any ship she couldn't outgun the heart of the navy was its heavily armored battleships the conventional wisdom of the time held that as in nelson's day nations could only achieve greatness with great battle fleets entering the stage as a world power america created a great navy and intended to use it in 1898 the united states declared war on spain the olympia was by then the flagship of commodore george dewey dewey sailed to manila with orders to capture or destroy the spanish fleet there the spanish interestingly enough could have done themselves a favor tactically by anchoring under the much heavier guns of the city of manila spanish commander feared that if he anchored off the city the overshot guns from the american fleet might kill civilians and he didn't want to risk that so instead he put his own fleet at greater risk by anchoring instead under the guns of the naval base at cavite two hours into the battle dewey was informed they only had 20 percent of their shells left it turned out it was a mistaken message the message was we fired 20 percent of the of the shells however they had maneuvered away from the spanish fleet so we ordered the everyone to stand down they had their lunch came turned around came back in and the battle continued for the rest of the day the spanish fought gallantly some of those gunners went down firing literally firing their guns as the ship sunk beneath them later after all this was over william b sims did a calculation of exactly how many shells of those fired struck their target and it was in one or two percent it was a very very small number so the accuracy was very poor but the american ships were newer they were better armed they had rifled guns with better shells the spanish ships were older they had less armor they were unprotected and it really was a mismatch from the beginning remember ships that evolved out of sailing ships had kept bringing more and more powerful guns aboard the tradition was that guns were fired locally each gun crew aimed and fired its gun what the spanish-american war proved to both sides was that this whole system didn't work anymore as the 20th century began it seemed that battleships armed with a mix of heavy guns would give the biggest bang for the naval buck then in may 1905 the japanese destroyed a russian fleet at the battle of tsushima firing at a distance of 8 000 yards battles were now being fought at even greater ranges the main lesson of the battle was that the most effective guns were the 12 inchers which sank targets miles away well out of the range of the enemy's smaller guns and torpedoes the all big gun battleship which had been discussed for some time now seemed the way to go then in february 1906 eight months after tsushima britain confirmed this theory and shocked the world the dreadnought was the product of the inexhaustible inventiveness and ambition of jackie fisher a former gunnery officer on the warrior and now first sea lord built in only one year she was the first capital ship to be driven solely by steam turbines and could cut through the waves at a speed of 21 knots previously no warship had carried more than four 12-inch guns dreadnought had 10 in five turrets she also had 24 3-inch guns five torpedo tubes below her waterline and a lingering holdover from the previous era the ram bow the dreadnought's launch had the same impact as the warrior almost 50 years earlier every other warship in the world became obsolete overnight fisher liked to call her a hard-boiled egg because she can't be beat that was true for about three years on each of dreadnought's masks was a small armored platform these were for spotters who used optical devices to calculate distances and sent their findings down to the fire control people deep in the ship they calculated gun elevations and other information required to throw a shell accurately over 12 miles of sea the limit of visual range at sea on a clear day the simple calculators they used were the beginning of our information age and what happens between about 1900 and 1914 is that ships ceased to be if you like assemblies of individual guns all fired at the individual level at a clear target which is easily identifiable to the gunners from the gun position and ships become essentially single guns single batteries so what you're doing is you're firing the ship at another ship uh jetland the opening salvo start going off at about 22 000 yards that's like taking something that weighs about as much as your family car and throwing it 10 miles and trying to hit something that's moving and more than that your position changes from the time you get a fire control solution until you actually fire the guns and the enemy is moving as well so you need to compute where you're going to be when your guns fire where the enemy is going to be when your shells land that's all going to be factored into how you lay the guns on atmospherics become important because you need to know the wind direction and humidity and you also need to know that the shell will actually spiral and because of the spin on the shell it will drift a little bit to the right and more so the further you fire so it all has to be calculated in if you're firing at basically point-blank range you're not going to get much drift through 20 000 yards it's going to be well to the right by the time it lands and so to do all that you need basically the advent of modern computers analog computers adding to the complexity of early 20th century naval warfare was the introduction of new classes of warships designed for specific roles such as mine layers torpedo boats and torpedo boat destroyers but the battleship and the battle fleet still preoccupied naval thinking as an adjunct to them battle cruisers some bigger than battleships were built they would have the large guns of battleships but exchange armor for speed it was a fatal decision for the first two years of the first world war the german and english fleets watched each other from their respective sides of the north sea then in may 1916 the two fleets met for most of that day the ensuing battle of jutland consisted of first the german and then the english battlecruiser squadrons trying to lure the other under the guns of his battleships it was a lethal game of bait and switch because of their large guns battle cruisers were used like battleships but their light armor could not endure the devastating impact from the german shells in the battle cruiser action german fire destroyed first the indefatigable and twenty minutes later the queen mary over two thousand men perished [Music] in the days of sail fleets approached each other at a walking pace at jutland the opposing forces raced at each other at a speed of 40 knots each formed the traditional line of battle and the british admiral jelico crossed the german line but the german fleet executed a simultaneous about turn and screened by smoke and torpedoes escaped the british and during the night they slipped out of the noose at jutlin the ranges were so great that the shells were actually plunging and so a lot of the british shells actually broke up when they struck the armor punched in a little bit but the actual explosion of the shell took place outside the armored body of the ship and so the germans got beaten up almost beaten to a pulp but they only lost one first-class warship jutlin was the great battle between battleships and the largest naval encounter since trafalgar it proved indecisive because of the terminal fear of a weapon that would add a new dimension to war at sea running silently in the black depths of the ocean was the torpedo and its perfect carrier the submarine the torpedo potentially made the most powerful battleship vulnerable to a ship one twentieth of its size as protection they needed screens of destroyers [Music] during the first world war with little threat from the air submarines could attack unescorted merchantmen at will to conserve their limited torpedoes their deck gun was used to sink merchantmen in their precious cargoes the third dimension of naval warfare and ship design was a bystander at the battle of jutland in the first world war the airplane was largely seen as a great place to put observers this idea persisted long after aircraft were strong enough to carry ship sinking bombs and torpedoes the first aircraft carriers were just existing ships rigged with makeshift flight decks the marriage between aircraft and ships resulted in ships like the uss lexington which was laid down as a battle cruiser in 1921 and finished as a carrier in 1925. their original role was envisioned to give the battle fleet more eyes in the sky than could then be provided by the spotter planes that were becoming standard on large warships [Music] a carrier landing in the early days of flight was anything but routine in the early 20s the american general billy mitchell staged several demonstrations of how vulnerable battleships were to air attack the conservative admirals argued that they were only at risk when the battleships were at anchor and not firing back they still didn't get the point world war ii was not kind to battleships in all 32 were sunk on november the 25th 1941 hms barham a super dreadnought which had fought at jutland was sunk by three submarine-launched torpedoes in december japanese carrier-based planes destroyed the u.s navy's pacific battle fleet at pearl harbor it seemed to be a japanese triumph but there were no carriers in the harbor critically the japanese didn't destroy the navy repair shops and oil tank farms if the u.s had been able to quickly replace those lost battleships its counter-attack might have been built around them as it was they had to work with what they had chester nimitz the new pacific naval commander raised his flag on a submarine the united states in the early months of the war had to depend on two other kinds of naval forces its aircraft carriers and its submarine force and those two turned out to be the decisive weapons in the war anyway so the japanese did themselves no great favor they bought themselves some time to be sure from december of 1941 till the middle of 1942 the japanese owned the western pacific in june off midway island a large japanese fleet was set to trap what they thought were the last american carriers in the pacific it was ambushed by planes from three u.s carriers the first wave of torpedo bombers was decimated by japanese zero fighters not one torpedo hit a japanese carrier but their sacrifice drew the zeroes down to sea level when the dive bombers attacked from on high in five minutes the american planes left three of the four japanese carriers as burning wrecks an hour or two later the fourth japanese carrier as well the one that survived the first strike would also be caught and sent to the bottom so that the entire japanese strike force of carriers was destroyed in a single morning now yamamoto still had over 150 ships combatant ships ready to throw into the fight but he had no significant air cover and he didn't want to take on american carriers with japanese battleships and had to call off the whole operation if pearl harbor had shown the impotence of the battleship in the face of air power midway was the final blow there was now a new mistress on the surface of the seas the aircraft carrier but underneath the waves the submarine was emerging as a deadly competitor to win that ominous title by war's end u.s subs had sunk some 60 percent of japan's merchant and naval fleets admiral nimitz gave us submarine guys a damn good quote that we were the backbone of the nations until the navy got back on their feet again well 52 submarines were lost during world war ii actually we lost over 5 000 men we lost 22.8 percent of our men total height a percentage of all the armed services even though they lost more in number percentage-wise we realized the submarine could rapidly become a steel coffin the only defenses were their greatest weapons silence and depth after about 15 16 hours down below you can't even strike a match down here because there's no oxygen so after about 2 17 18 hours to have what they call co2 absorbers they would spread a sheet out put the salt solution on the sheet and it would agitate it and now it gives you some oxygen to breathe not pure oxygen but you can survive with that with that co2 absorbers in the atlantic the menacing u-boat wolf packs were beyond the range of allied air cover and could operate with impunity on the surface and did their best hunting at night once the u-boat pack was assembled around the convoy and night fell then really the wolves are turned loose because the the land-based operational authority does not control the tactical phase of the battle when that happens the normal practice was for the submarines to actually take on ballast and bring the submarine down so only the conning tower will show it and then to use the submarine essentially as a motor torpedo boat the u-boats were usually the type 7 equipped with torpedoes as well as its deck gun the convoy's primary escorts were canadian corvettes simple ships armed with death charges which had to be dropped directly over a u-boat they engaged in a deadly game of cat and mouse with the cat having an early form of sonar called aztec generally a submarine produced a sharp uh sound coming back so you you recognize it that yeah that's a submarine but a whale could do the same thing a school of fish could do the same thing now you would decide from how good the sound of the target sounded whether or not you'd drop let's say a five or ten charge pattern if it were if it was uh excellent an excellent target to thinking that really sounds like a submarine i wanted more than just investigate i want to see if if that is a submarine i'd like to get it and a tent charge pattern would hopefully place five charges above the the the submarine five charges beneath it in 1943 new long-range aircraft began to curb the u-boat surface actions and forced them back under the cold north atlantic the spiral of technical innovation spawned a new weapon in the war against the silent hunters with depth charges you lost your target when you got close to it whereas with the with the hedgehog you that weapon through the projectiles uh 240 yards i think it was ahead of the ship so that you were in contact right to the last minute and you could adjust fine adjustments for the very last minute and your chances of getting it were greater and it was a very successful weapon that hedgehog was for the first time with an asw weapon you actually can maintain sonar contact uh fire something at it and know pretty well as a contact fused weapon if you've hit it this is really the cusp if you like of not exactly a precision guided munition but it's sort of the cusp of modern technology in the sense that now you're really trying to get a bomb on a target as opposed to just plastering it with a series of depth charges being a submariner was the most deadly job in the second world war on either side my mother asked me why i took submarine service i said mom i'll either come back to you in one piece i won't come back at all you never saw a submarine sailor with one arm missing i want our leg missing either comes back in one piece and don't come back at all in the years immediately after 1945 navy's navies in general appeared to be somewhat sidelined by the impact of nuclear weapons nuclear bombs were big and heavy and they needed big and heavy aircraft to deliver them and by definition these aircraft were not going to be carrier base as the senior service the navy did not intend to be sidelined by the relatively new and upstart air force in 1955 the u.s launched the nautilus the world's first nuclear submarine at one stroke a ship that had to surface to hunt and replenish became able to stay at sea almost indefinitely and with new air reusing technology submerged as long as the crew could endure it was soon followed by a ship that transcended any previous notion of naval warfare the missile submarine as america's capital warship and her most significant nuclear deterrent they are now named after states an honor previously reserved for battleships the battleships reached their peak at the end of the second world war with the iowa class the japanese surrendered on the missouri but even as the aircraft carrier and nuclear submarine made them obsolete they still found their uses as gun platforms and tomahawk missile launch pads as recently as the gulf war the battleship's surface successor is the aircraft carrier with all its complex technology as the technology moved on and particularly the uh processes of militarization with nuclear weapons and the advent of the jet engine in aircraft meant that by the early 1950s it was possible to to deliver nuclear weapons from carrier-borne aircraft since 1961 all new american carriers have been nuclear powered with the latest class named after one of their great naval heroes chester nimitz they can carry over 70 jet fighters bombers and electronic warfare aircraft traditionally sailors had generations to learn and refine the art of waging ward c technology now evolves at such an accelerated pace that weapons can be developed become obsolete and be replaced without ever being proven in the inferno of battle [Music] in fact since the second world war there has only been one war fought by two relatively equal countries who put their weapons to the test [Music] the battle for the falklands was the first challenge of the naval and air technology that had been created for modern war well the role of sea power in the fortunes conflict was absolutely crucial it was the means by which the forces and the materiel physically got to that location seven thousand miles away from the uk home base and it was the means by which power was projected against the land british nuclear hunter killer submarines preceded the fleet on may 2nd 1982 one sank the argentine cruiser general belgrano that kept the rest of the argentine navy including an aircraft carrier off the sea for the duration of the war two days later a land-based argentine fighter struck the destroyer sheffield with a french-built exocet missile the resulting fire ignited by the warhead and fed by the missile's unused fuel exposed serious flaws in the ship's construction the argentines lost about 80 planes even so they sank four more ships and should have sunk others the arming of the conventional bombs was faulty these bombs were dropped from relatively low level perhaps 100 150 feet they arming devices on the bombs did not have time to engage inside the bomb with the result that although many bombs hit their targets they were effectively just solid shot they they bounced off their targets without actually without actually exploding and in the post falcons analysis it's perhaps worth bearing in mind that although four ships four warships are sunk in fact more than 15 ships are actually hit by argentine ordnance and uh had the fusing arrangements been more comprehensively managed then british losses would undoubtedly have been greater the lessons of the battle were clear first nobody can think of everything and as always no matter what you do in a war people will die i think that all navies studied the falco's campaign at great length in an attempt to improve design and learn tactical lessons from the falklands campaign the canadian navy was no different and certainly the hal fights class design in terms of um damage control and turned to construction moving away from a aluminum in hulls and enhanced ship's fitted system for firefighting were lessons that were learned from the falklands today warships must protect an enormous amount of delicate electronics incendiary ammunition and their most fragile cargo the crew unfortunately technology has evolved so that you can't run and can't hide from the enemy missiles that penetrate the first line of defense anti-missiles still have to face the close defense systems of chaff and finally the phalanx looking like a malevolent r2d2 it is a modern version of the gatling gun its radar tracks the target and throws up a wall of lead between the incoming missile and the ship today's navies see themselves as information networks to ensure that everything is under real-time micro control by the central command in the u.s navy this control is exercised from three joint command ships the foremost being the uss mount whitney arguably the most sophisticated warship ever commissioned she is so valuable that she is sometimes called the uss target a flagship basically sets this stage with command and control of fleet movements evolutions logistics how to go from point a to point b to asw anti-submarine warfare search plans we run the show from here the key element of the navy's tactics is the nuclear-powered aircraft carrier it is the largest costliest and most powerful warship ever made it can carry enough nuclear warheads to [ __ ] a country but it also has the ability to deliver much more precise payloads on non-nuclear targets the whole goal in an aircraft carrier is the ability to project power from the sea ashore with a complement of a 70 to 80 aircraft aboard normally about 50 fighter type aircraft that can deliver bombs or protect the ship we're able to project power from four to 600 nautical miles at sea the projection of power from the air and the surface is augmented by a fleet of nuclear-powered attack submarines all of our tax submarines have an inherent capability a mission area known as strike warfare to execute that mission area we load out before we deploy the tomahawk land attack missile in the case of this particular ship in addition to our torpedo tubes we also have 12 vertical launch tubes which gives us the ability to provide in a fairly short period of time 16 missiles in support of the joint task force commander's objectives and we've had this capability for some number of years but looking back a decade ago in desert storm where our tax submarines employed roughly four percent of the of the land attack missiles in that conflict to just last year in kosovo where roughly 25 percent of the missiles that were were launched there came from submarines in about nine years the u.s navy will begin deploying 32 new zumwalt-class land attack destroyers with a crew of only 95 they will be the first warships specifically built to support what has been termed the navy's evolving neck centric warfare concept and it could have another evolutionary goal the dd-21s array of ultra-modern armaments will include smart missiles that can hit targets 1000 miles inland eclipsing the range of any carrier-based aircraft the range of naval power is intercontinental a nimitz-class carrier has a crew of 5000 and requires the protection of about a dozen other ships with another five thousand people aboard crude like a current frigate the equivalent number of people could man 105 relatively inexpensive plug and play zumwalts but the future is not just about technology i would like to just stress that as fast as technology is pushing we still have to remember what the lessons learned from our english forefathers our dutch forefathers our portuguese forefathers the basic going to see lessons learned should never be lost on ships we cannot afford to be seduced by the technology so that we cannot get back to the basics through the evolution from oak to iron war at sea is waged by men and now women who still go down to the sea in ships foreign [Music] you

Channel: Janson Media

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Keywords: navy, aircraft carrier, us navy ships, us military power 2021, aircraft carrier documentary, us navy fleet clips, us navy ships in action, warship life at sea, warship battle, warship movie, naval, naval academy, history of ships, history of ships documentary, viking ship sailing, viking ships at sunrise, Golden Hinde, golden hinde pirate ship, pirate ships, spanish armada vs english navy, spanish armada 1588, dutch indiaman, sea power, fleet, battleships, heavy metal, warship

Id: gsmZUgeyDas

Length: 90min 5sec (5405 seconds)

Published: Thu Jan 06 2022