When Designers Fail: Three Ship Engineering Mistakes from History

[Music] in 1939 the Royal Navy was outfitting its newest class of Destroyer when it became clear that something was badly wrong the ship was leaning to and fro at its fitting outwar and it hadn't even reached the open ocean yet at C it would probably completely capsize and roll over there was a serious issue that had gone surprisingly unnoticed during the design phase and it would have dramatic consequences ladies and gentlemen I'm your friend Mike Brady from Ocean Lin of designs and here are some more fascinating ship design fails from [Music] history in the late

1930s the British admiralty Was preparing for an impending war with Germany because at the time it seemed like an inescapable likelihood if a war broke out the burden of Defending Britain's coasts and trade would fall to the world famous Royal Navy so much effort was put into upgrading War ships and phasing out older types wherever possible by the late 1930s the admiralty had realized it needed two completely different kinds of Destroyers these handy warships were like a Swiss army knife they were capable of doing many different tasks but some would need to be specialized to

accomplish specific roles the Royal Navy needed destroyers for Fleet work that is serving alongside warships to engage enemy fleets in open ocean they prioritize speed and a heavy torpedo Armament by contrast the Navy also needed modern escort destroyers these were smaller and easily Mass manufactured the escort destroyers would protect the slow vulnerable Merchant convoys from enemy OTS and surface warships as well as aircraft in the first world war this type of warship was called a Sloop and not a destroyer because a Sloop is not designed for big Fleet deployments but simple Convoy escort work they

were typically slow no faster than 20 knots when most Fleet destroyers could steam along at 30 or more but they were cheap and they were useful in late 1938 a design specification was issued for a new type of fast escort ship to help out with Convoy duties had to be about 1,000 tons achieve speeds of about 30 knots and be kitted out with a powerful anti-aircraft Armament crucially though they also needed to be easily Mass manufactured and cheap to produce rather than start from scratch and with the outbreak of War looming dangerously close the admiralty

design team under the naval architect Stanley Goodall took the recently introduced HMS bter and escort Sloop and decided to base their design off of that the plan was to use bter as a basis and upssize her to create a new larger and more powerful class of Convoy escort warship if that were all the design team had to accomplish it wouldn't necessarily be a problem but as always bureaucracy crept in the new class of ship would be expected to lend a hand in Fleet actions as well if necessary meaning they would also need to be fast

the design team got to work the new ships would be called The Hunt class first B's design was slightly lengthened from about 266 ft to 278 ft and her beam was narrowed from 37 ft to 28 ft 10 in a greater length a narrower width or beam would make the ship faster through the water on top of this the draft which is the amount of ship below the waterline was reduced from 8'5 in to about 79 in now hopefully this is ringing some alarm bells for you already because surprisingly apparently it didn't do so for

the design team when equipped with powerful Parsons turbines outputting some 19,000 shaft horsepower the Hunts should have been able to achieve speeds close to about 30 knots as part of their escort duties the Hunts would need to protect from German aircraft they would need a heavy anti-air defense Armament and seae keeping behavior that would make it easier to aim the guns the first part of that equation was easy enough for main Armament the hunt class copied HMS B they would Mount three turrets each with a pair of 4in Dual Purpose guns for a total of

Six Guns now the hunt class had their anti-air Armament the designers went to work ensuring they could aim them easier the ship's designer can actually influence just how much the ship rolls in the water we've looked at this on the channel before it has to do with the ship's metacentric height for a ship designed to engage aircraft like the hunt class was a long Slow Roll would be better than a quick Snappy one if the ship was rolling slower and more predictably it would make the guns easier to aim so the hunt class needed a

low metacentric height this was calculated with complex mathematics by the design team and checked by Sir Stanley himself but off the bat sir Stanley had his reservations in his daily diary he wrote that he felt that the design team was quote poor and they might need more supervision but in the rush to rearm and upgrade the Royal Navy in the face of a war Goodall's remit was completely overloaded with projects that all required his attention and sign off unfortunately it meant the several obvious signs that the hunt class would be a disaster went unnoticed all

the way from the drawing board to construction upsizing a ship's design like that of the bitten class Sloop is actually quite difficult because it means all the careful calculations that were made to ensure the stability and good seae keeping need to be done and done again the first hunt class ship HMS a stone went down the slipway in December 19 19 39 and was completed ready for duties in March 1940 but tests showed some alarming behaviors before even putting to Sea at the fitting out Warf it was found that Aon was dangerously unstable which was

a serious serious problem because the first 20 hunt class ships were already ordered and under construction nearing completion Aon with her anti-air turrets mounted high up seemed likely to capsize in anything more than a moderate sea something had gone terribly wrong the complex mathematics required to calculate the ship's Center of buoyancy and its rolling motion had taken the design team some time to calculate but somewhere somebody had made a mistake in their math basing the Hunt's design on the bitter class Sloop meant concessions would need to be made and in the Quest for more speed

it should have already been setting off alarm bells that the hunt class would be required to mount a heavy defensive Armament high up on the super structure while also being significantly narrower than the bitten class early on Sir Stanley had actually caught wind of this issue and he figured that the beam would need to be increased before Aon the first hunt class ship was laid down the beam was increased by 9 in but clearly it wasn't enough to account for the additional heavy guns and the need for a specific metacentric height to provide a stable

platform lots of calculations were done around the predicted vertical center of gravity in fact so much mathematics were done for these ships that each new design ended up with its own class book of calculations this was full of formulas and information that was checked and signed off by Sir Stanley Goodall but it seems like he the design team and even a second independent calculator brought in to check the figures missed a simple error in calculating the predicted center of gravity a figure of 7 ft was given from the keill to the upper deck instead of

the actual 17 ft this meant that a huge amount of weight was emitted from the equation from low down in the ship thinking they had more to play with the designers essentially stacked more weight up on on top and didn't realize they were too light down at the bottom of the ship the independent Checker should have caught this but they didn't instead they just copied the figures the final numbers lined up the calculations looked right and the design was approved a year and a bit later the hunt class ships lulled in the water pathetically without

even going to Sea so with a dud series of ships the admiralty design team got back to the drawing board clearly not much could be done for the 20 or so hunt class ships that were already completed or underway for these ships known as batch one one of the three 4in gun turrets was removed the funnels height was cut down and some of the superstructure around the bridge was removed giving the ships a lean of silhouette no less than 50 tons of cement were poured in to the bottom to provide additional Bast and we down

the ship below now that would do for the first lot but it was far from ideal the ships had needed to carry a full battery of Six Guns not just four the admiralty design team caught their error the hunt classes beam was increased from a mere 28 3 in to 32' 6 in the simple change to the ship's width ensured all Six Guns could be fitted as intended in the end 86 hunt class ships were built they did a fine job during the war but the in glorious start to their career was an avoidable embarrassment

it can probably be chalked up to an overworked team rushing to get a design through as quickly as possible with the best of intentions and then a senior overseer like sir Stanley who was just as overworked and preoccupied but while Britain Was preparing to to face the might of the German Navy it turns out that the Germans were making some design blunders of their own if there's one thing that can be said for German warships it's that they are extremely pretty with their long Sleek Silhouettes but it was exactly this quality that early on meant

that some of Germany's battleships functioned almost more like submarines than surface ships in the early to mid 1930s Germany was hurriedly rearming its Navy pouring hundreds of millions of marks into replacing the grand Fleet it had lost following the first World War the resultant surface warships actually took a lot of internal design cues from first world war ships as far as armor layout and things like that but essentially they were designed for close- range engagements in the Atlantic and North Sea and especially for hunting down Allied Merchant ships and convoys early on the surface warships

were given relatively small caliber main guns the famous pocket battleships like Admiral sheer were designed as a kind of Heavy Cruiser but in 1935 Nazi Germany committed to building proper battleships with the sisters shanor and ganau these were formidable modern fast battleships that mounted 9 28 CM or 11in guns a small caliber as far as battleships go but one ideal for picking apart Merchant ships the real secret to their success was their speed an impressive 30 to 31 knots thanks in part to the immensely powerful Triple Steam turbines outputting some 160,000 shaft horsepower but the

speed was derived from that power plant coupled to the whole sh shape the battleships were long and narrow a hull form ideal for cutting through the water like a hot knife through butter it would make the pair of deadly Duo able to engage and disengage the enemy at will attack a convoy with impunity before escaping quickly into a developing rain squ if the resistance proved too dangerous they would be quick another feature of the ship's design to enhance their speed was the bow shape a straight stem the stem is the very front of the ship

and it gives the bow its shape in the Glory Days of the ocean liner back in the late 18 and early 1900s designers had toyed with a variety of shapes for their stems in the ever growing Quest For Speed kunard Line introduced morania and Lucitania in 1907 with very straight stems a straight stem differs significantly from a ra stem which introduces an angle to the bow an angled or ra stem essentially provides more bow structure meaning there is more buoyancy simply more ship to float it means that a ship with a ra bow is more

likely to ride over the waves comfortably as the ra stem and bow is lifted by the ocean but a straight stem by contrast has less buoyancy it means the ship will cut straight through a wave and maintain its speed Lucitania and morania with their straight stems could easily cut through massive Atlantic swells and maintain their fast record-breaking crossing times but they also exhibited some Strange Behaviors one of my favorite stories is from the morania the straight stem gave the ship a weird tendency to drop suddenly underfoot something that occasionally startled passengers once her Captain dressed

up to the nines for dinner went quickly to the bridge to check that all was well before heading below when suddenly in the face of a big wave morania bow dropped and the wave rolled up the bow crashing over the bridge Wing dcing the captain completely in seawater designers back then used to account for this loss of boyy forward with an emphasized Shear that is an exaggerated angle on the ship's deck as the down Narrows the shear line flicks up dramatically providing once again simply more ship's structure to float and prevent any unwanted dropping by

the head shanor and Gan now were each designed with straight stems to emphasize their speed in fact most of those early Nazi German surface warships were including the pocket battleships and even the modern Heavy Cruiser Admiral hipper shanor and now went for their sea trials and they sure were fast but then their bows started dropping into the sea the straight stem meant that there just wasn't enough buoyancy for the ship to ride over waves which to be fair is exactly what the designers had wanted they wanted their ships to cut through the waves instead but

with such low Sleek Hull forms there was barely any freeboard that is to say barely any ship above the water line to begin with Lucitania and morania had tall holes it meant that they could deal with the Heavy Seas even with a straight narrow bow shanor and Gan now were the opposite and even worse they had relatively little Shear to account account for it they shipped tons and tons of water over the bow when the sea was up and waves were bigger with the forward decks of wash the sea water found its way through ventilation

ducts and hatches to flood the inner workings of the bow and cause short circuits and wiring around the first gun turret now this was obviously not okay and it became pretty obvious that some serious modifications were needed shanor and G now were both held up while their bow section was redesigned the old straight stem was cut away and a new ra shape was added instead the anchors which had sat in HSE pipes on the side of the hle were moved to sit up on Deck because with decks a wash they were likely to be ripped

away the new bow came to be known as the Atlantic bow and it turned out the shanor and gisen now weren't the only ships that actually needed them the surviving pocket battleships like Admiral Shear had their bowels replaced so did the brand new Heavy Cruiser Admiral hipper then the famous Bismark newly launched was given one too but her sister ship taits didn't have a complete need Hull yet so she was actually launched with the new ra bow install for shanor and G now the fix didn't totally remedy the issues but it did enough to prevent

serious flooding now they rode the waves a little easier instead of sinking under them but it was still common in Heavy Seas for the ships to travel with their forward gun turrets Traverse to point backwards to prevent damage to the gun barrels from any unusually large waves the fact was they had such little freeboard and such a shallow Shear line they would be doomed to ship water over their boughs for the rest of their careers to be fair this problem wasn't unique to the German battleships other warships from the time including Allied surface vessels became

known as wet ships for doing the same thing but for the Germans the issue was serious enough as to require a full redesign and refit for most of their big surface warships lastly here's a short one for you and it has to do with Titanic but not in the way that you might think we all know about the ship's design shortcomings we've actually covered them in exhaustive detail on this channel before but one stands out because on the night of the sinking it caused some proper confusion Titanic was the second in a trio of sister

ships the first being RMS Olympic the ship took a number of design cues from all the white star liners and clearly one of the great aian past times at Sea was walking early white Starline ships featured lots of lovely long promenades for people to get fresh air and stretch their legs on Olympic the designers gave first class no more than three massive promenades the first was up on the exposed boat deck at the top of the ship then below that was the open prominade on a deck that ran the length of the super structure and

then below that could be found a fully enclosed prominade space to protect passengers from the elements with natural light coming through from Big Square Windows that could all be hand cranked open now early on it became clear that this was just too much passengers enjoyed having some enclosed prominade space but three dedicated promenades was just too much and a huge waste of space the designers fixed this on Titanic deleting the B deck prominade almost entirely and installing new and insanely luxurious Suites and staterooms in its place up on ad deck though they did something interesting

they provided first class passengers a kind of half and half experience with the forward section of the prominade being enclosed with a screen and windows the same that were used on Olympic's B deck prominade and the after section was left open it gave Titanic's exterior a unique look and it solved the problem well except that there was one huge ISS issue that was completely overlooked see the prominade deck wasn't just a space for passengers to stretch their legs it was also meant to play a crucial part in the ship's evacuation during a potential disaster Olympic

and Titanic's evacuation Plan called for passengers to meet on the prominade deck on a deck to wait to get into the lifeboats the boats were stored up above on the boat deck with passengers waiting below and out of the way in an orderly fashion it would give the crew enough space to ready the boats and swing them out the boat would be brought to the level of the open prominade on ad deck and passengers could step up on a small stool climbing out through the railing and into the boat easy enough but on the night

of April 14th of the morning of the 15th this plan was actually put into action and found severely wanting after his ship had hit the iceberg Captain Smith ordered the lifeboats be Reed swung out and lowered down to ad as was standard practice he had been captain of Olympic before that and had done such Lifeboat drill on that ship the crew got to work and passengers waited down on ad but those early boats encountered an issue Smith had forgotten that Titanic had won whole half of its prominade deck enclosed it meant that passengers couldn't get

through the windows had to be hand cranked down Lifeboat 4 on the port side was actually lowered down to ad before they realized the windows were closed and couldn't be opened without the handles somebody was sent to fetch some and then the crew moved on to lowering other lifeboats Lifeboat 4 was left swinging there empty for most of the evacuation until finally a member of the crew had got a handle and managed to crank some of the windows down the passengers were fed awkwardly through the open Windows into the boat and it was lowered away

a full hour after it had been swung out in the first place at 1:50 a.m. only 25 minutes before the ship was gone for good it is only a minor design era in the end most of the boats were boarded from the boat deck and it wasn't a big deal but it seems incredible that should have been overlooked in the first place so it needs to go down in history as one of the great Maritime design fails ladies and gentlemen it's your friend Mike Brady from ocean liner designs thank you so much for watching this

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