Pinned post for Q&A :)

After all these years,
- Destroyers - Concept and Development (1860-1914)
- Destroyers - Interwar development and design (1918-1939)
- Destroyer Development in WW2 - (1939-1945)

Finally I have them all

My uncle was on two destroyers sunk by the Japanese in night battles. He was a tough Irishman who boxed before the war. He witnessed terrible things. He came back from the Pacific a broken man. He could never hold a job or have a family. He lived a lonely life for 50 years. Let’s don’t forget the men who served on these vessels.

"Some battleships were more agile than the Mogadors" , made me laugh so hard. Merry Christmas !

A conclusion to the destroyer development series is an excellent Christmas present. Thanks, Drach!

FIVE! YEARS!!!!!!…..NO! FRECKIN! WAY!…..Have I really been listening to you for +5 years!?!?!?!?….I swear, that plague has shot my sense if time all to hell :)

It is absolutely wild to me that some Gearings were in service so long that they wound up carrying the same missiles as the Arleigh Burkes. Some had CIWS, some had ASROC, some even had helicopter hangers.

When a battleship has a beter turning circle than a destroyer, something has gone terribly wrong.

Thank you for this.  It is meaningful for me because my grandfather helped weld together the three Sumner class US destroyers shown (including the USS Laffey) at Bath Iron Works here in Maine.  The shipyard's motto was and still is, "Bath Built, Best Built."

"There were also some bolt-action-operated 37mm guns around, mostly for entertainment purposes." Love it!

What a wonderful Christmas present.
Thanks Drach.

Edit: Also, I would absolutely want a video on the last of the gun-based destroyers.

38:28 - radar being a far sighted choice is a nice little pun 😊

Peace on earth.
Vigilance and crushing power projection on water.

Merry Drachisms:

9:46  "But then, in a complete 4D chess move ..."

14:17  "Having a revised power-plant that didn't break down quite as often."

14:49  "Which, by now, were unhelpfully being laid down in 1941 and not 1936."

24:06  "Or, giving the fighters something to strafe that wasn't torpedoes full of pure oxygen."

25:54  "The class, as a whole, proved remarkably survivable for a Japanese warship of the second world war."

27:40  "acting more as a giant life-boat."

30:27  "Resulting in a somewhat 'blocky' ship that almost looks like a low-polygon model from a 1990s video game."

49:40  "And, after a survey of the bipedal attack-dogs that comprised most of the Royal Navy's destroyer captains."

"..The Gearing production was cut short by the end of the war...at ONLY 98 ships."
LOL. Gotta love the scale of the Arsenal of Democracy....

Mom,  look Santa is real!

12:10 yes, we Italians built our Regia Marina to bother the Brits, and an effective design choice to accomplish this was to put 'gli' in the names of our ships.
There could be some article in the international law about weapons that still cause victims decades after the conflict ended, thus... sowwy.
😜

"Bipedal attack dogs that were British destroyer captains"

This is why I show up every week 😁

The Sumner at 53:50 threw me for a loop. I looked at those HUGE bofors mounts and moved my head from side to side looking at the flat monitor as if that would fix the viewing perspective. Looked it up and they were dual 3" mounts added later toward the 1950's. I learned as a 12 year old that changing viewing angle on a television does not allow you to look up skirts.

Hey drach i recently watched your video about the battle of jutland on History Undone. There you talk about the differnt qualities of coal greatly affecting a ships performance. Would you be able to do a full video about fuel, the differnt qualities/where they were found, i.e Welsh coal vs german coal and maybe a video, like a part 2 on oil? I know its alot to ask but i am very curious and i love your video formats. Hope you have an amazing xmas, thankyou so much for your work.

Merry Christmas Drach