Brad Nelson
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עַבְדְּךָ֔ אֶת־ הַתְּשׁוּעָ֥ה הַגְּדֹלָ֖ה הַזֹּ֑את
Posts: 12,261
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Post by Brad Nelson on Feb 21, 2020 15:01:30 GMT -8
The presenter is English. I'm assuming the tests were made in Europe.
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Post by timothylane on Feb 21, 2020 15:40:09 GMT -8
Yes, there were 3 survivors of the Hood, and I think the last died not too long ago. The battlecruisers that blew up at Jutland had more survivors. I read a brief account from such a survivor (I don't know which he was on), who jumped into the water because he thought (based on what he was hearing) that the ship was about to blow. As he surfaced, he felt a wave on the back of his neck, looked around, and realized that it was the backwash from the ship sinking.
Incidentally, one reason there may have been fewer survivors in 1941 is circumstance. Hood and Prince of Wales met Bismarck at the southern entrance into Denmark Strait (between Greenland and Iceland). And the survivors were probably in the water longer. Beatty had 6 battlecruisers, of which 2 blew up (Queen Mary and I think Indefatigable), so there were ships nearby to rescue them. The other (Inflexible, I think) was part of a group of 3, so again rescue was readily available. At Denmark Strait, Prince of Wales was driven off heavily damaged and probably rescued no one. The 2 shadowing heavy cruisers (Suffolk and Norfolk) probably rescued the survivors, and only after Bismarck and Prinz Eugen headed on.
The blowups at Jutland were probably caused by cordite flash, not a direct hit on a magazine. The flash from the explosion would spread into the magazine through an open door, setting it off -- and then a whole chain of connected magazines. This almost happened to a German battlecruiser at Dogger Bank, from which they learned about the danger and instituted flash controls. It also almost happened to another British battlecruiser at Jutland (I think it was Tiger, next behind Beatty's flagship Lion), from which the British finally learned about it and came up with their own ways of preventing it in the future.
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Post by timothylane on Feb 21, 2020 17:34:39 GMT -8
I checked the wikipedia article on the Battle of Jutland, and found there were a few slip-ups in my report. Although Tiger was hit hard in the battle, the near-disaster from cordite flash was on Beatty's own flagship, Lion. The incident that led to Beatty's famous comment was actually the Princess Royal being engulf in spray and water from shells that probably were near-misses. The lookout on Lion mistakenly thought she had blown up, too. The later battlecruiser blown up was Invincible, not Inflexible, which makes for much better irony. (They were together at the Falkland Islands, so I tend to confuse them due to a weird mental quirk involving paired items.)
The first of the blow-ups also resulted in only 2 survivors, though the other 2 had 9 and 6. Some of the ships lost at Jutland had no survivors at all. However, checking the articles on the individual ships indicates 3 on the Indefatigable (plus the captain, who survived badly wounded and died before he could be picked up) and 18 on the Queen Mary, though it agrees that there were only 6 on Invincible. Ironically, Admiral Hood (not the first admiral of that name, and probably not the namesake of the later battlecruiser) was one of those killed.
The sequencing of the incidents I mentioned seems to have been: the near-blowup of Lion, the blowup of Indefatigable, the blowup of Queen Mary, the momentary disappearance into spray of Princess Royal, and the blowup of Invincible.
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Brad Nelson
Administrator
עַבְדְּךָ֔ אֶת־ הַתְּשׁוּעָ֥ה הַגְּדֹלָ֖ה הַזֹּ֑את
Posts: 12,261
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Post by Brad Nelson on Feb 22, 2020 8:05:51 GMT -8
Okay. Thanks for the info.
One interesting part of the Hood documentary was that they were going to try to retrieve the ship's bell. They had spotted it on a previous expedition and had since received the Admiralty’s permission.
They took a try at it. The bell slipped out and fell down a little and then they gave up. Seemed like a little wimpy effort to me. But they didn’t want to risk the ROV. Blah blah blah. I suppose.
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Post by timothylane on Feb 22, 2020 8:18:22 GMT -8
Incidentally, the wikipedia article on the Hood discusses the various theories about what caused the explosion. (Incidentally, it also notes similarities between Admiral Holland in the Denmark Strait and Admiral Beatty at Jutland. Maybe it was all a matter of karma.) Perhaps from that you could figure out what point they were trying to make, though the historical consensus remains that it was a magazine explosion.
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Brad Nelson
Administrator
עַבְדְּךָ֔ אֶת־ הַתְּשׁוּעָ֥ה הַגְּדֹלָ֖ה הַזֹּ֑את
Posts: 12,261
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Post by Brad Nelson on Feb 25, 2020 9:29:13 GMT -8
I was taking a look at a list of Formula 1 winners the other day and noticed that Mercedes has one the last six championships, five with Britain’s Lewis Hamilton and one with Finish-German Nico Rosberg. That toe adjustment sounds reminiscent of the wing adjustments on the Chaparral-era cars. That apparently was disastrous and quickly banned. I don’t know if there is anything analogous here. What happens if the driver doesn’t adjust the DAS to normal when entering a corner? I guess the rule is that you can’t have anything the adjust the suspension parameters of the car. Whether that rule eventually changes because of innovation, we’ll see. Maybe one of the problems is that these cars are going fast enough as it is. |
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