Fun With Naval Terminology

[mbartley]

On the subject of (USN) Iowa class battleships, I recently dug out and scanned in these old photos. I took them from a small plane I flew over Long Beach, California, back before they got rid of most of our military bases here. These are New Jersey and Missouri. New Jersey is the one with its main guns raised.

Apologies for the picture quality. These were from a good 35mm film SLR camera, as low as I was allowed to fly (about 1 boat-length, in the case of these!), but taken through the window of the plane while I was looking all around trying to avoid a mid-air collision...

New Jersey and Missouri are long gone, to Camden, New Jersey and Pearl Harbor, Hawaii, respectively. Iowa is now nearby, in San Pedro, as a museum ship. I've never visited or even seen Wisconsin.

A question for the group: I noticed there appears to be a thin red line suspended between New Jersey's aft gun turret and its stern. I thought it was a scratch in the negative or something, but it appears to be in both pictures. Any idea what it was?

 

[Urwumpe]

Could that be an oil barrier? It is floating around the ship, if you look carefully.

 

[Evil_Onyx]

It stretches around the entire ship some kind of floating barrier.

 

[Andy44]

Could that be an oil barrier? It is floating around the ship, if you look carefully.

Probably. I've always thought navies were wasting time using sonar to track US Navy ships when all you really need is to follow the oil slick.

 

[PhantomCruiser]

Alrighty then... There is an oil barrier plainly visible in the first image. Start pier-side right under the gun tubs and you can see the orange floaty-thingys (there's a technical term for them, but I don't care.. ) Also visible in the same picture in the water "above" the flight deck and continuing on forward of turret 3.

Those wires... It was pretty common when in (foreign) port and on special holidays to rig the ship with "friendship lights". A gang of bo'suns would rig wire rope (steel cable to normal people) from the fantail up to the rigging, across and down to the foc'sul. Then light stringers would be run up and the place would be lit up like a cruise ship. Usually the lights were just outdoor use white bulbs, but on Christmas they were multicolored. Still sucked being away from home, but if I have my choice of places to be on Christmas Pattaya Beach ain't bad. They made that HR antenna up on the bow look like a Christmas tree.
Anyway, looks like the Mighty J is rigged for lights (or getting there). Not sure what the Mo' is doing, but she sure has a lot of awning rigged. Normally we'd only do that for VIP types so they didn't have to stand in the sun during some ceremony or another.
I keep threatening to dig up some old photos from my BB days. You dudes are going to push me into it yet.

 

[mojoey]

Do it. I want to see if my mental image of you as a lean, mean, fightin' sailor matches reality.

 

[Linguofreak]

I ran across an interesting and very detailed analysis of Jutland on a link from some Wikipedia article or other (I forget which). It seems to be a bootleg scan of a book, so I won't link it here, but the author seems to be of the opinion that the primary factor in the British losses at Jutland was not the light construction of the battlecruisers or deficiencies in British propellant handling (he states that German handling wasn't much better), but in the more sensitive and quick-burning nature of the British propellants themselves.

 

[Urwumpe]

..., but in the more sensitive and quick-burning nature of the British propellants themselves.

Well, that does not really work alone by the chemistry.

Aside of the stabilizer used, both fleets used identical propellant compositions.

The British fleet stored their propellants in silk bags - lighter, but easier to ignite. The Germans used brass cartridge cases, which are much safer. Also the British jelly stabilizer was inferior to the German centralite one.

Much worse had been the propellant handling itself: The way how the propellant bags had been handled and designed, they left a trail of gunpowder from gun to magazine. One hit to a turret resulted in a rapidly burning powder fire running to the magazine. Also they shed nitrocellulose particles from their silk bags, something that did not happen to the German projectiles.

British propellants exploded 75 times more often during flash testing than contemporary US propellants.

 

[Linguofreak]

Well, that does not really work alone by the chemistry.

Aside of the stabilizer used, both fleets used identical propellant compositions.

The British fleet stored their propellants in silk bags - lighter, but easier to ignite. The Germans used brass cartridge cases, which are much safer. Also the British jelly stabilizer was inferior to the German centralite one.

I think the stabilizer and bagging is the major thing that this author is talking about when he talks about the differences in propellant stability.

Much worse had been the propellant handling itself: The way how the propellant bags had been handled and designed, they left a trail of gunpowder from gun to magazine. One hit to a turret resulted in a rapidly burning powder fire running to the magazine.

This analysis of Jutland claims that German propellant handling was almost as bad, but that the Germans got away with it because of the more stable propellant.

Also they shed nitrocellulose particles from their silk bags, something that did not happen to the German projectiles.

British propellants exploded 75 times more often during flash testing than contemporary US propellants.

The specific measurement in that test was that British cordite ignited at 22 inches from a flash, while US propellant ignited at 5 inches. (22/5)^3 is 85, so you have about 85 times more spatial volume around a flash within which British propellant would ignite as opposed to American propellant.

The author of the analysis I read notes that Lion at Jutland would have been obliterated by her turret fire if the magazines had not been closed and flooded. Seydlitz, at Dogger Bank, suffered a double turret fire six times the size, including the ignition of a few charges *in the magazine itself* (bagged fore-charges in transport, but not any brass-cased main charges and not any charges in storage), but survived. The author opines that Seydlitz would certainly have blown up at Dogger Bank if using British charges.

EDIT: I think the best German strategy for winning the naval war lay in spreading influenza among British crews: One sneeze in the magazines and the whole ship goes up.

 

[Urwumpe]

This analysis of Jutland claims that German propellant handling was almost as bad, but that the Germans got away with it because of the more stable propellant.

Doubtful - Germans did not use blackpowder bags integrated into their charges, which was important factor of this problem.

Also German and British turrets had completely different layouts and procedures, so it is hard to claim that it was equally bad. German gunnery never had this hang for rapid fire like the British and never adopted the idea of storing ammunition close to the guns in advance for having a rapid early phase of gunnery.

The author of the analysis I read notes that Lion at Jutland would have been obliterated by her turret fire if the magazines had not been closed and flooded. Seydlitz, at Dogger Bank, suffered a double turret fire six times the size, including the ignition of a few charges *in the magazine itself* (bagged fore-charges in transport, but not any brass-cased main charges and not any charges in storage), but survived. The author opines that Seydlitz would certainly have blown up at Dogger Bank if using British charges.

Yeah, that is very likely. Seydlitz was badly battered. Was a bit like the Bismarck, where the massive shelling of the British removed nearly everything lightly armored above the deck and left only the strongly armoured citadel behind.

 

[Linguofreak]

Doubtful - Germans did not use blackpowder bags integrated into their charges, which was important factor of this problem.

I think there may be a disconnect as to what we're calling "handling" here. To me the blackpowder bag is part of the propellant, which is to say it's part of the physical design of the charge. Handling would be what people do with the charges once they're aboard ship (magazine storage, transportation to the guns for firing, loading procedures, etc.).

 

[Urwumpe]

I think there may be a disconnect as to what we're calling "handling" here. To me the blackpowder bag is part of the propellant, which is to say it's part of the physical design of the charge. Handling would be what people do with the charges once they're aboard ship (magazine storage, transportation to the guns for firing, loading procedures, etc.).

Well, I call handling "everything from packaging design to how the packages are actually handled".

Because, after all, how the package looks like defines how you can handle it.

 

[Notebook]

WWI destroyers "found" in Portsmouth Naval Base.

http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/video_and_audio/headlines/36058154

N.