HMS Queen Mary: An Evolutionary Ship in a Time of Fleet Transition

How Splendid!

Was queen mary, reverse evolution, moving her officers quarters back aft for traditions sake?

Dr a: " I'd like to do it in 25 minutes... 4 hours later, oh I went a bit over" (probably)

My only problem with the 'splendid cats' is the location of Q turret. In my not so humble opinion placing a turret there was a big mistake. A mistake so obvious I have to wonder how it got approved.

Actually doc, i not saying random, i am pointing something you overlooked, what does this do to the Kongos

If the Queen Mary-class battlecruiser, HMS Queen Mary was oil fired then the Tiger class battlecruiser, HMS Tiger will be and so will the Kongo class battlecruisers unless the Japanese request coal-oil and if Queen Mary and Tiger is somehow able to reach 30 kts then the Renowns and Admirals might be aimed for 32-34 knots.

If the Kongos are oil fired as a result of Queen Mary and Tiger and they get say 30.5kts then than is a big problem for the Americans as they have nothing that can catch as the US BB are way too slow
and none of their armoured cruisers stand a chance.

Good example of a ship that’s harder to sink in World of Warships than it sadly was in reality

I would happily promote your book for a chocolate bar. 🙂

I had wondered what was up with her dreyer table. Thanks.

Good stuff

That's annoying, my comment to your question got deleted.

Basically, repulse and Queen Mary have the same number of boilers. So Queen Mary should go about repulse fast.

Tiger has a lot more oil than Queen Mary to support this conclusion.

It would be doctrinally superior to put more guns or armor on Queen Mary and still go 28 knots versus going to 31. But I don't think Fisher much cared about doctrine.

Finally, it occurred to me that maybe one of the reasons for moving the battle cruiser force down the Firth was logistics. Because they ate a lot of coal. A lot a lot.

Also, should have been a much more comfortable ship due to the great reduction of stokers.

Thank you for using feet/inches.

my birthday is this week to sir.the 26th dr.clarke

First, Happy Birthday. Second, I just recently finished TBD (purchased back in 2023), and I have just one thing to say about it. I want MORE from this author. Can you see that that happens?

With regard to the Queen Mary and her demise, I would partly blame her loss onto her crew. British ammunition practices at the time meant that a lot of ammunition was not kept within magazines especially during combat in order to try and speed up the firing rate. What that meant in actual practice was that for the guns she was armed with, they were able to cut down the time to reload a gun by maybe 5 seconds, but at the very real risk suffering the fate that Queen Mary actually did.

In an interesting counterfactual, what would have been the result if HMS Lion had suffered a magazine explosion and Beatty was killed during the Battle of Jutland? If nothing else, postwar writing on the battle would have been somewhat different since Beatty would no longer have been able to control the story.

For me, so many factors l had never considered. So a really excellent video. I would ask about storage of cordite in the turret, the rapid firing considered so vital by seniors in the RN was a factor in QM loss ?

I see your point about the battle cruisers,whether one or two words, being test beds since they’re single units. But they are also capital ships.
Arguably, the key deficiency of the battle cruisers as a concept was the fact that they looked like dreadnought battleships and are counted as capital ships…but aren’t battleships. So if they are capital ships, the conservative mindset of incremental improvement is justified because you can’t go and toss out a battle cruiser because things didn’t work out. A destroyer or submarine, sure, worst comes to worse if you have to keep it you can shuffle it off somewhere less explodey. A capital ship, not so much.
Good video. And the insight into ‘Blinker’ Hall was a great bonus for me. I obviously knew he had a career before Room 40 and the naval intelligence operation but didn’t know what it was.

Thank you. Enjoyed hearing about Hall. Is this the same man who, I’ve read, had a poor relationship with the code breakers of Room 40, that caused the miscommunication, that in turn prevented he and Jellico from realizing the High Seas fleet was at sea on the day of Jutland?
If so, it is good to hear more about his personality and abilities. He seems a capable and thoughtful officer. Perhaps the poor relationship and miscommunication was more the fault of said code breakers than himself.

Beatty criticising a captain can in retrospect be considered a mark of excellence, likewise Jellicoe's praise and gunnery prizes.

Tragic loss, and yes, hard not to see it as being as a result of Beatty's ineptitude, Would she have faced such concentratred fire if the 5thBS had been where they should or such close ranged fire under any other admiral. It must have been so hard for those who'd transferred off the ships lost at Jutland beforehand.

Bizarre that anyone would want to delay putting the best available fire control system on a 13.5" gunned superdreadnought - surely the ships best able to put it to good advantage! Strange how Winston Churchill's effectiveness seems to collapse as the level of detail he's fiddling with goes up.

If they'd gone oil fired and small tube boilers into QM and squeezed 15s into Tiger, then you have to look at the QEs (and Rs) having small tube boilers then at the least:
Bigger advantage at Jutland - if the QEs are two kts faster, then even Beatty probably wouldn't have left them behind - that projects us into Hipper's scouting force getting wiped out and then a debate as to whether Scheer pursues (possibly to his destruction) - and the whole question of the shortened war and its many consequences.
If Washington happens similarly then the RN pushes hard for the 15" gunned Tiger, and possibly QM being in the mix so one/two more dreadnoughts for RN and USN - 3 more would be tidy for the 3:2 ratio vs Japan (I'd guess Lion stays?). QM and the 15" Tiger would have been rather useful in WW2.

A sort of related question I've often pondered is what happens if Tiger gets a crack crew based around a core from one of the older battle experienced Invincibles?