Being able to be like "hey this document says this thing was done to the Iowa class battleships, let me just go check my Iowa class battleship" is a hell of a flex
@@anthonycavalliotis8736 Technically it is still fully armoured and if you pop someone on deck with a gun. It is technically able to fire back at an enemy. Therefore could be classed as such. Semantics I know but an interesting thought experiment
I can see a Navy bean counter asking why, exactly, we were permanently disabling in an irreversible fashion something as powerful as those turrets when we could just lock them in place temporarily with something you can undo... at this point well... probably not a thing you're gonna do.
what I'm hearing is that a dremel and a few big motors is all that stands between Ryan and having the firepower to declare the New Jersey as an independent floating country
Those welds did not look all that serious. I think, possibly, somebody with a heavy short handled sledge hammer could slam into that little piece of metal enough times to break the welds. Maybe even some big channel lock pliers or vice grips and a long bar for leverage could twist that piece of metal off. That said, the battery powered angle grinder would definitely be a winner.
i mean ... it is though, your not going to hand remove that without tools, OR without knowing its there, and most people who might try to steal it or use it for bad purposes dont know its there, well until now anyway, but that turret is effectively locked
@@ilenastarbreeze4978 I highly doubt it's effectively locked. Removed with tools? A sledge hammer would do it. How much force is that? The massive amount of force needed to rotate that turret weighing many, many tons wouldn't have much issue sheering off a little piece of 1/8x2" angle. The other issue is the welds at the bottom, this was obviously a hack job and I highly doubt they put any pre heat into that huge mass of metal at the bottom. Trying to weld a little angle onto a huge piece of cold steel would result in extremely poor fusion, the welds would probably crack off at the bottom before the angle itself yielded and broke. If anyone needs anything clarified just ask, I do this for a job.
Great video explaining what I asked the USS Alabama BB-60. They replied that they could manually crank the turrets but it was extremely slow. They said during the filming of the movie Under Seige, it took like 6 hours of hand cranking to get the turret in the position for a few shots the movie director wanted.
Ryan has said in a previous video that the Iowa class lack such hand driven cranks... even if they were massively geared, the turrets just weigh too much to move by hand. Interesting to know some BB's did have them though
In theory, since the motion required to actually move (even something as small as this) is not that big (it would be counterproductive to have an excessively hard to move turret, hence the many, big rollers inside) that by disconnecting the gearing inside, for them to move the turrets by winch from the inside. That said, Ryan is a bit incorrect... considering the tech advancements we've made today, the motor powering the hydraulics, and even the hydraulic pump itself, ... they're obsolete. Strong, bulky, sturdy, but obsolete. We've had some pretty big changes in motor design alone, allowing for really compact, but powerful units. A proper engineering team (with work in the field) could retrofit the existing setup to move the turret, slower, but under the amp load limit of the shore power. I don't know about prices in US, but at least here in EU, the prices wouldn't be astronomical for a job that big. I know of a 44 ton carousel setup that moves with something like 15k Euros worth of motor and hydraulic pump at something like 10 rotations per minute.
@@aserta That pretty much sums up my gut feeling of Ryans' explanation being more of "we have no means/rights/need to do it" case rather than "it can't be done".
I earned my ESWS pin on the Jersey, and I was part of her decommissioning crew in 1990. There is a way to manually rotate the turrets by hand, when the locking pins are removed. If you can find any of the old 16 inch .50 Cal Gunner’s Mates, I’m sure they can tell you how it’s done.
yes, one would imagine there probably is, if just to do the final small movements needed to align the locking pins when centering the turret. It will of course be EXTREMELY slow as the mechanical reduction needed will be massive.
A 300hp 480v motor is rated for around 360amps full load. They can pull 5x that for a split second during startup that's why the breaker is so big. You could install a soft start or VFD to get the motor to ramp up slowly to not trip your 1200amp breaker.
Plus, it makes absolutely no sense to not be able to turn the turrets off shore-power purely for maintenance or repair. If a motor goes out, you need to be able to run a replacement motor to verify it's fixed, and I highly doubt they'd fire up a boiler and get a turbogenerator spinning purely for such routine tasks. Same with the movement of the turrets in general: They'd probably need a regular wiggle just to make sure they didn't rust into place.
The insulation on the windings of that 1940s motor probably couldn't take the voltage gradients from the VFD. They'd be better off using wrenches to turn the gears directly. That's how the team on Iowa elevated one of their barrels. It takes hours but doesn't risk damaging anything.
Yeah breakers for motors that size are generally just sized for the the conductors, as the motor will have external/internal protections of its own. Generally it is 4:1, but up to 8:1 is code. It's very likely the grid won't like that load at all. Especially because it's a random burst of load. Just flipping on a 300hp motor randomly is a great way to get unfriendly visits from the power company.
@@ionstorm66 Does one need to worry of unfriendly power company visit after 16-in gun turret is trained at the access road? 😂😂😂 And don't spoil the fun with "you need ammo", please 🤣🤣
Ryan, the 300 HP electric motor was able to move the turret at 4 degrees per second, who says you need to move the turret at that speed. Move a side the 300 HP motor and install a much lower HP/current motor the turret moves but at a much lower rate. As long as the motor can produce the hydraulic press needed the volume/flow can be less.
absolutely, otherwise if you wished to aim rhe turrents a few degrees off set like HMS Belfast, you could rent a large diesel generator to make the power. or like they said just run the exsisting motor at a lower draw for slower operation, or a newer more efficient motor. if the only physcial barrier is the pins being 'welded' in palce, then you can find solutions for the other problems.
@@Simon-ho6ly like for the Jaws of life, but how much PSI is the Hydaulic system in the turret? Most Portable Hydraulic Generators from firetrucks make 10,000 psi peak. although other larger ones exsist.
I think the issue is the 300 hp electrohydraulic motor is probably inside a heavily armored compartment. by the days of the iowas there was basically no way to hand crank a turret that heavy so you probably armored the hell out of the machinery instead
Great find! I’d be tempted to grind off the plate on one locking assembly just to see if the pin could be withdrawn and reinserted. But that’s just me. 🇺🇸👍🏻
sure thing ;) and when it's out.... well, the engineer in me keeps thinking "if they can draw 1000amps from shore, sure one could figure out some electrical wizzardry to activate the motor at part power without it trying to draw it's full load". would be fun, seeing her rotating her turrets!
@@wolfhalupka8992 Do not bother with the main motor, just use a smaller hydraulic pump to provide pressure. Will slew very slowly, but still within power limits. After all the main power bank had to provide enough flow to move a few hundred tons of gun in conjunction with a gunnery computer to compensate for both the motion of the ship and wave action making it roll, so had to be able to compensate very fast, with high flows.
@@wolfhalupka8992 Also, a 300 horse power (a little more than 200 kW) motor needs MUCH less than 1000 amps at any reasonable voltage. There's something wrong with that calculation. The huge breakers might be for the whole turret, not just the slew motor? Of course the ship's internal electrical system might use different voltage from the shore power?
@@SeanBZA people keep saying this assuming there is a separate electric motor and hydraulic motor with lines connecting them that could be separated and a different pumping system added. typical of what we would see today on modern hydraulic systems. Based on some footage from other devices on the ship Ryan has refereed to as electro hydraulic . The rotating mechanism may be one gigantic housing electric and hydraulic portions all in one, and if that is the case it’s likely bypassing the motor wouldn’t be possible I really don’t have the answer, but I don’t think it’s safe to assume that an 80 year old system works just like a modern tractor, and all the same tricks apply.
Bravo to you Ryan for dispelling another rumor about the 16" guns and their disability. I believe as you do that the Navy would not disable the ships in such a way that they could not be reactivated.
The fact is USS New Jersey and the other museum ships are still US Navy property. In a sense they're "loaners" to the various museum organizations that showcase them, so it doesn't make sense that the Navy would permanently cripple them. It's not likely the NJ will ever be returned to service but you never know, do you?
@@wayneantoniazzi2706 Missiles are nice and all, but there's nothing quite like a large-caliber artillery barrage to completely demoralize and/or destroy any ground formations within range. I still hate that the Army got rid of the 8" M110 howitzers, those things were damned impressive, when you're on the edge of an impact area you can definitely tell the difference between 155s impacting and those monsters. :D The Iowas' 16" rifles could still have a role for shore bombardment, and they were all fitted to launch Tomahawks so could also strike targets far beyond the range of their guns. Plus, with all that armor they're far more likely to survive hits from anti-ship missiles (though the anti-torpedo protection would probably need a huge upgrade).
Didn't Ryan do a video a while back about how reactivating the ship would be such a long, complicated process that it would be cheaper and quicker to build a new ship from scratch? And also the new ship would be way better because... um... new and modern technology?
It's also the simplest, most efficient way to take out something that's "decommissioned" not "scrapped". We sometimes mothball houses that cannot be restored (funds), but are of historic value. We don't "weld" the doors shut, we bar the doors from the inside and climb out of an easily accessible spot that can be sealed up from the outside.
@@aserta That must be pretty interesting to do. It is a bit sad to see old barns that have collapsed in the rural parts of the Northeast. If walls could talk.
The motors on the turrets are designed to move the turrets while underway in a heavy seaway. Moored at the dock, in essentially level conditions, the turret motors wouldn't take anywhere *NEAR* their full rated power draw. I'd be willing to bet a case of beer that (after cutting that piece of steel off of that pin) the turrets would move quite nicely on shore power alone.
Part of me wants to see the turrets rotate just for laughs and part of me wants to have it done to stick it to the Navy for the "oh! but the turret welds!" shenanigans. I mean... even if you did need full power to engage the hydroelectric motor to turn the turrets... You can meet the demand with portable generators and decent electrician work. Wouldn't be pretty and it would just be symbolic (which is the point), but it would work. Hell, more janky things have been done officially in the Navy historically anyways.
@@matchesburn Well, you'd have to agree that the turrets ARE welded into place, so the navy didn't lie That the welds are so insignificant, that they can be broken with a good whack of a sledgehammer,... details
After my visits to the Wisconsin and then Texas I ran across an article, at least for Texas, that the turrets had a manual system for rotating their turrets in case of a massive power outage during battle.
Found another comment from planehogger. It takes the USS Alabama BB-60 6 hours to move the turrets by hand, with a hell of a lot of help by ropes. Not practical to use during battle.
Maybe for the secondary turrets, not the primaries though. Youd never be able to rotate them at anywhere near a useable speed while underway and under fire.
@@killergames391 the turrets are balanced in all positions. But in case of damage, you would want some means to return a turret to centerline to get the guns out of the way.
This is the sort of video that makes this channel great. It's not big or showy. It's information that can only be found because you guys have an Iowa Class battleship to hand whenever necessary, and you're curious to explore all the things that make Battleship New Jersey what it is. Edit: And when it comes to making one of the turbo generators operational... it's better to ask for forgiveness from the Navy instead of permission. I mean what are they going to do, confiscate the battleship and ground the entire staff for a week?
It is very unfair though to others that don't have their own Iowa class battleship... As for turbo generators - while all that stuff is shut, there is no risk from weapon system because any attempt to start everything in short order would likely fail. However if the ship would have running power grid capable of operating main armament, it is not that difficult to produce shells and powder charges. I think it is better this way, the only option to keep them more operational would be if they were on naval base and with formally navy crew.
They've already been told no. Asking for forgiveness because you did something that you were explicitly told not to do is not going to get you very far. If the Navy had never said anything about reactivating certain systems, and then the museum crew decided to give it a shot, one could make the argument that they were never told no. In this case they clearly been told, in a legal contract, no.
@@bastarddoggy yup I think it would actually lead to quick contract revocation and scrapping of the ships. Any such attempt would need to be agreed in advance.
Is there any "back up" to moving the turrets like there is for manually turning the rudders??? Like 2,000 turns of a crank to move the turret 3 degrees?
There's spare motors... also pumping the hydraulic fluid. No matter what redundant traverse motors you use, you're still gonna be pulling 1.8kA from something. If the spare diesel generators in the keel's void space, or the turbines aren't producing power, you have much bigger issues than "we can't turn the turret" ;)
In older ships there would likely have been a solution that allowed crew to turn turrets mechanically but as electrical and hydraulic systems became more reliable this would have become increasingly redundant (and pointless due to the sheer inertia of the turret and increase in requisite manpower)
There's online documentation from the decommissioning crew and yard workers that NJ had a partially welded jack screw for one of the barrels. The action was stopped and not done on any of the other ships. Dying to know if this is true. Seems easy enough to plop down in the gun pits and find out.
If that were the case they wouldn't have been able to elevate the barrels when they started the museum in 2001. Which they were able to if you come aboard and see her today, at least on turrets nos 1 and 2. Must be on 3 if anywhere.
@@bradyeverett9225 So the report stated that the welding was just started before someone was able to stop it. It didn't effect the ability to raise the barrels. This could all be nonsense though...
Absolutely awesome learning all this detail. These ladies, though built for destruction, represent the culmination of 500 years of naval architecture and tecnology and are invaluable pieces of history to show how things were done, with slide rules, drafting tables and welding torches. No school like the old school.
@@terryboyer1342 - The ship is next to Camdem & Philadephia. I bet there are plenty of rats in both towns, to adequately make that treadmill move the turret. Probably enough to turn the screws to get her going at her rated 33 knots !
@@richardmillhousenixon Aw sorry, are your little feewings hurt? Everything IS political nowadays. It's sad. I didn't ask for it. But that's reality now.
I don't know you would even have to cut that weld to remove the pin. it looks like you could just unbolt that cap and access the pin directly and screw it out from down the the acess. This wasn't welding to decommission, this was welded so that some dumbo didn't play with the wrong thing. Things like this happened all the time because it's just that extra 5% that takes it from able to be messed with to "special tools required" also, if it's a threaded pin they may have worried about it backing out if there's a little play in it. over the years if there's any slop, the moving of the water will cause the turret to want to walk that back up and out of the threads. this is basically just a cheap easy way to non-destructively prevent that
Yea, kinda thinking the same thing, but more along the lines of making sure the guns don't rock on the gearing and bearings, wearing them down or breaking them, then to keep then safe from "some dumbo".
It also looks like whoever welded that piece on, couldn't do a decent weld either. Shocking quality of work if I say so myself. 5 minutes with a 4.5inch disc grinder and it would be loose.
@@sirmalus5153 my guess is zero prep and a quick stick weld. It's not made to be a good job, it's made to jam things up and get cut off quickly. I do stuff like that at work when in just putting a clamp on the bench or something like that
@@sirmalus5153 it's don that way so you can easily find and remove the part. If the welding had been done nicer it could have been hard to find the welding during a reactivation
I'm sure the answer is "we have no idea" but surely there has to be some sort of manual backup to rotate the turret in a severe emergency right? Like a wheel or screw with some super crazy gear ratio. Like say the ship took severe damage in battle lost all power and had to be towed to port, but the turrets were blocking entry into port or something. The navy definitely had some sort of backup to prevent this kind of situation.
Yes. It's called removing the turret with a barge crane. If the ship lost all power (like SoDak, but on a more permanent basis) then aux power would be supplied by an assisting ship, which the turret motor would run off of. If the turret motor is wrecked in such a way that it can't be repaired in situ, WITHOUT wrecking the rest of the traverse mechanism somehow (maybe an electrical fire?) then the would have to pull the turret. Each turret weighs ~3000 tons. Manual operation of the turret, no matter how many reduction gears you add, is not possible. It is just too heavy.
@@michaelwanamaker9829 Would the emergency generators be able to provide enough to run the motor in a lower gear? Furthermore, didn't each turret have its own emergency generator?
@@calenedgar3722 I’m sure he’s talked about the power capacity of the emergency diesel generators, but I’m also sure that they can’t provide 1800 A of current. As far as centering the guns, you might be able to use a tug and the barrels as a lever.
@@dcviper985 ship has a paid of 250KW generators. A single turret draws more power than that total. It would not be practical to operate the turrets if the main power was down, you would need power for other more important things like DC.
IF the pins were removed.there should be a manual gear reduction drive in the turret...on either the south Dakota or NC class such a drive exists..it is like 3 hours to move...same with elevation of the guns. I saw a video of one of the memorial battleships lowering their guns to put the bloomers on...perhaps Massachusetts or Missouri
@@ionstorm66 I bet its possible to decouple the hydraulics and then use a block and tackle on the barrels to the deck since its just sitting on rollers
The whole point of the navy putting them in museums was so that, if it became necessary, they could, theoretically, re-commission them. It makes no sense at all that would hard weld the turrets in place at a point that would destroy the mechanisms themselves for future use.
Not really, this was done when they were put to reserve, not museum donation. The potential for them to be mobilized was primarily aimed at by what is and is not allowed contractually, but only to a point and that point is mostly gone because navy got rid of whole lot stuff needed to support them.
Once gone from the property of the state, they're gone. As museum ships (and outside the gov's care) they're no longer usable. They're governed under an agreement plan (as Ryan states) but that's about as far and wide as the reach of the gov goes. Well, maybe if the museum tried to ... i dunno, sell the ship to another country's military... but that might be in the agreement papers as well. This mod we see here, isn't done for museum deactivation purpose, this is done because it's the cheapest simplest method to stop this turret from turning. I've seen this thousands of times, if there's an easy way out to stop something from doing something, where the need to keep the mechanism at large in existence is in place, the shortest, easiest path is always taken. Old buildings, they take the cogs out of the elevator mechanisms. They cut the first floor ladders out. The're doors barred with concrete blocks to stop the door from opening. Bunkers, they will just cut the wires to the electric motor or drain the hydraulic fluid out of the hydraulic motors. Even saw a bunker where they basically removed the metal link bar from the safety system, so once all but the escape shutter doors were closed, they could never be opened and then poured a concrete plug on top of that final door. Easily reversible. There's a bunker complex in Italy, they just walled up the main entrance, you can still get inside the old cableways.
@@aserta The Iowa's are special case. Recievers of the ships have to keep a minimal level of maintenence on the ships so they could'theorticly be returned to service of necessary.. That restrction was supposed to end in 2011 when, as the law states asufficent replacemtn system of equal or greater firepaower could realized.The problem, is, the railgun is far from being as ready as they hoped. Hence why Iowa was moved to LA, becuase the curators in SF couldn't afford the minimum maintanence required by the law any more. Two, while fully decommissioned, are still listed on a reserve list. The other, while not on the reserve list, still must have minimum maintaince so they can be used for parts if the other two are returned to servivce. The Battleships are the only servicable weapon the navy has that can do close shore support for large scale amphibious landings. Aircraft, while they do surgical strikes, just arent capabable of staying on station and essentailly carpet bombing the shoreline and near shore defenses. Until the railgun system is ready, the Iwoa's are not fully released from the navy by law. They can still be recalled and have to be maintained for that possiblity. No, museum curators do not have carte blanche to do whatever they want with them. The navy is using the museums as simply free long term storage.
"navy putting them in museums was so that, if it became necessary, they could, theoretically, re-commission them." Like, say, in case of alien invasions where the invaders fire toy-peg-looking shells at ships happen to drop down and challenge both the United States Navy and Hollywood to a game of "Battleship."
@@aserta "Once gone from the property of the state, they're gone" Oh man, I got a good laugh out of that one. But, no. Wrong. Read the Defense Production Act Executive Order from 2012 and see what the feds can legally do. If tomorrow fedgov showed up at USS New Jersey and said we're talking it back... there would be no debate. It would happen. Regardless of who "owned" the New Jersey on paper or not or if it was in civilian hands. To give you an idea, do you know what happened on CV-10 a few years back? USMC personnel showed up, said "let us see your static display F/A-18" and started taking spare parts off of it. And no one was going to stop them, regardless of it the F/A-18 was on loan, civilian owned, leased, whatever. It doesn't matter. Fedgov gets what it wants. Always. Period. Even if they have to trample over you to get it.
Shore power is intended to provide "Hotel Services" to allow crew to live onboard pierside while the plant is shut down. There should be enough excess capacity past that point to allow powering the minimum required to light off 1 boiler. The general plan is that you use shore power to bring up one boiler, allowing you to bring up a Turbine Generator. Once that TG is up, you have enough power to start bringing up the rest of the plant. That said, how you checked the rated outputs of the Emergency Diesel Generators? Any one of them should be adequate to bring up a boiler, and I'd be surprised if there wasn't enough power to operate at least 1 turret and support equipment. (They should all have breakers/bus ties on the main board)
That is way more than a 300HP motor should draw. I suggest you look at the nameplate. If it is sevuced at 460V it should have a full load Amos rating of something like 400 amps. The breaker may be that rating to allow it not to trip on the starting inrush current of the motor.
That's called the interrupting rating of a fuse/breaker and I think you're probably right. I think max locked rotor would still be under 2500A on a 300hp motor...
@@ghost307 Yes, and a properly functioning breaker should allow that through. A breaker can trip either magnetically, which protects from short circuits, or thermally, which protects it from sustained overloads. Motor inrush current shouldn't be high enough to trip a breaker magnetically or sustained for long enough to trip it thermally.
You know I'm in law enforcement and I've heard so many times over the years when I've had an old patrol car people ask if the police engine had been removed and I said of course not. It would make no sense for a law enforcement agency to spend money to remove a part and put some other part in it the battleship is the same way if the Navy were to ever need the ship why would they weld around the barbet to make the gun turrets inoperable. So as Ryan said it is a simple small thing that prevents the turrets from turning and it would be just as easy to reactivate the ship should some catastrophe happen and the Navy would need it again.
Your comment immediately made me think of the Crown Victoria. Like battleships, they're tough cars that can take a lot of abuse and they're built to last. I drive an '87 Crown Victoria, the square bodied "LTD" generation, and after watching Ryan's videos and gaining an interest in battleships, I made a joke to some friends that I had commissioned my car "BB-87. USS Crown Victoria"
@@erikterock9071 I just got a chuckle reading your comment. I also drive a 1987 Crown Victoria wagon and have in my collection a 1991 Crown Victoria wagon and recently purchased a 1989 Mercury Grand Marquis. Like the battleship's they are durable and built for duration.
@@AugustusTitus Yes, the engines did change. The 1979-1991 police models did indeed have the 5.8. Mine is a civilian model with the 5.0. It's underpowered just enough to be annoying, but as reliable as I could ever ask for.
My maternal grandfather Tommy Lamont was a Royal Navy gunner in WW1, invallided out with 'shell shock' and damage to his heart that he carried to his grave in the 1970s. My uncle, his son, also Tommy Lamont, served on HMS Eagle during the 50s & 60s. I just caught the videos of battleship USS Missouri firing her 16" guns, and the route in and out of a 16" gun turret on USS Iowa. I find your videos highly enlightening, in being able to try imagine the conditions that my granda Lamont served under, why the men he served with were such close friends for the rest of their days. Ships he served on were sunk from under him in multiple WW1 sea battles.
Most likely the Navy at the time was not happy with retiring the ships, but the good part is they are being kept clean and somewhat repaired for future use if needed
Ryan I am extremely impressed at what you and your crew will do to get access to some of the smallest areas of the ship! And allow us to gain greater knowledge of little or not so little intricacies that would not be available otherwise. Thank you so much
I’d love to see the 16” guns elevated and trained…preferably(?) not on Philadelphia, though! It’s not impossible; there’s a air museum that moves their Concorde’s nose/visor to the take off and landing positions. Pleeeease….?
As a Pittsburgher; I insist that the guns be trained in the general direction of Philly at least once a month!! Also I believe youre thinking of the Imperial War Museum in Duxford. They have a great youtube channel going over all of their planes.
A 300hp motor at 480v is going to draw 350-400 amps. The problem would be inrush current on start-up which only lasts for a few seconds but can be 6x-8x the full load amps. That's why the breaker on the ship is so big. Depending on the breaker on shore, you might be able to adjust the trip time to handle it.
Do the Iowas have a mechanical backup for any of the turret systems? Texas has the chain falls, then again, Texas also has backup steering after the electric and steam steering systems; I think we recently established that the Iowas have a mechanical adjustment, but not full rudder travel without the powered systems.
@@ghost307So then the museum could turn the turrets without energizing the motors if they really wanted to, but probably not on any regular basis such as they do for some of their other equipment.
I love all the people in the comments suggesting to get a small motor and turn the turrets! Come on Ryan. You know you want to. This is why I am here. Getting into the places you can't see when on the ships Tour.
"Give me a lever long enough and a fulcrum on which to place it, and I shall move the world." - Archimedes. There is almost certainly a manual mechanism to rotate the turrets, likely at a glacial pace. Would be a fun hours-long exercise for some volunteers and would make a high view count video if you wanted to investigate and give it a try.
Given the way things were done in the Navy back in the '40s, I assume the "mechanism" was, in fact, several hundred young men with no latitude to refuse instructions, however absurd. :)
Ive watched ALL of the videos on this channel. I really didnt think you had anything cool left to tell me... but this video proves I was very wrong. This might have been the coolest video Ive seen. Very interesting info and I love that you guys just figured out this mystery too. Awesome work and thanks for opening the floor for us to see! I love this channel. No other warship youtube channel does it better... and after I found you guys I looked hard... you guys make the best content in the game.
A quick fix if they ever do reactivate the ship. A few minutes of grinding and the pins can be removed. And you can tell the Navy was thinking ahead with how well moving parts are greased. I doubt they welded anything other than those pins. It took how many years to find those welds? That shows thought and ease of use
If you really wanted to move your turrets to pose them for whatever purpose, you would need to bring a generator on board (could be rented) and feed power directly to the turret swing controls. Your local United Rentals could find you the right size generator.
Love your information and complete explanation, I love restoring antique buses, and trains. When I see the paint chips I just want to run for a sweeper and clean it and paint it, of course taking safety in mind with the old paint, but there is nothing like bringing something old back to work, it's fulfilling and fun.
It's so cool that we get to see these hidden areas on the New Jersey, places that probably only a handful of people have ever seen in the ship's lifetime!
Wow. This is such an amazing behind the scenes video. Thank you Ryan for your work. It’s absolutely amazing to see someone exploring such an incredible piece of history with such knowledge and passion. Found this channel a few years ago and have been hooked ever since. My dad was an Air Force fighter pilot but my grandfather was a Navy medic. Thank you for keeping this piece of history alive.
Ryan you give up too easily. Whatever turns or rotates under power almost always has a manual wheel to operate the thing when power is lost. emergency steering for example, yes it takes several thousands manual turns on the wheel to move it, but its there. The turrets must have a manual rotation gear in there somewhere.
Or find away to lower the amount of amperage the motor draws. Imagine letting people pay to operate the forward gun turret. Just install sensors and a computer to limit the movement allowed and a button for emergency stop.
@@ThePTBRULES Yeah, I mean it takes a lot of power to turn the turret fast , if you reduce the speed, this also reduces the power needed. Of course the question is if it is possible to reduce the speed without heavily modifying anything.
@@ThePTBRULES Keep in mind the breakers are only for extreme overcurrent and to prevent the wiring from catching on fire. It's not what the motor is rated at.
You can convert horsepower to kW. 300hp is 223.71kW. W=A*V. Assuming a 450V motor, that’s 497.133A. However, given the amperage of the breaker mentioned, it is probably a 125V motor as that would draw 1789.68A. Wikipedia mentions that the SSTG’s provide 450V power. Based on my experience in the Navy, shore power is supplied at the same voltage as the generators. This means that the 1200A shore power breaker can provide 540kW of power. Over double what the turret needs to spin. So, yes. They can rotate A SINGLE turret on shore power easily.
I rarely write comments.. But I wanted to say how awesome I think you are with these. I love seeing things on military equip. that we normally wouldnt see. Semper Fi !
Interesting, cool information. To show American pride and heritage I still wish the Navy would have kept one Iowa class Battleship in service, and made a fleet with it like they do with the aircraft carriers. Maybe like with a smaller pocket carrier and ships.
The cost would be astronomical. The US navy can't even afford to operate the ships that it needs, let alone one that would only be ceremonial. And the US has the world's largest defense budget by a significant margin.
Yup, but that’s sort of what you’d want as part of your efforts to mothball a ship. Your modifications should be the minimum necessary to make the ship ready for long-term storage, while simultaneously as easy to reverse as you can make them. The pin is already doing the hard work of keeping the turret from rotating. All you need is to keep someone from mistakingly raising the pin.
See, despite there being something like 100 other points that are *way* harder than most people assume to get New Jersey's condition to a usable or re-activated state (even just to be under her own power and 'show off') there is at least 1 that is significantly easier! Keeping my entirely unrealistic desire to see her be usable again one day alive just a little bit more!
@@BattleshipNewJersey so... Now that Iowa has turned one of its turrets, how long does it take for you guys to make it work? I specifically want to see Ryan dremeling the welded pieces of iron off, that hold the locking pins in place😂 After an hour or so you should hand him the angle grinder over.😜
Does this count as a research breakthrough? It pretty definitively puts one of the longest-running myths about these ships to rest, so I feel like this counts as a research breakthrough.
One wonders, since, the navy has pretty much zero chance of re-activating the ship, why would they care if you ran the boilers and turbos for exhibit purposes? It seems like considerable effort was made to keep them usable in the future - and running them on occasion would make sure they didn't simply fail due to non-use. Could permission be obtained to "fire things up" for special occasions?
The channel needs a "Ryan gets inside cramped places" playlist.
2 года назад
Great Video. It is interesting how you still find out things about your "own" museum ship. It is also intersting how this kind of misunderstanding can be created and then be accepted fact.
Great video. Yeah, there's two most likely reasons for that report saying what it does. One is that the drafter didn't know what he was talking about or two, the report says what it says because someone had an agenda to discourage the possible reactivation of the _New Jersey_ and ordered the report written that way. I just now updated the Wikipedia page for the ship with a link to this video.
I was on the Wisconsin about 5 years ago and was talking to one of the guides and asked him if she could be returned to service. He said absolutely they could be recommissioned.
Can you do a video on the traversing mechanism? Your description of a electro-hydraulic motor raises many questions. There has got to be a way to slowly traverse the turrets by some other means.
Since I work in the industry there are main motors and there are maintenance motors for some heavy items. The maintenance motor do the same job but much slower. So it's worth to take a look at the transmission and motor setup. There might even be some documentation on how you do maintenance, since all those rollers would have to be taken care of now and then and that would require them to be rotated. The full current would as I see it be needed in order to change the direction and elevation quickly and even manage to compensate for the rolling of the ship by using a gyroscope. So it's worth to investigate the mechanisms and controls more.
It still should be possible to move the turret if the welds are removed and those pins unlocked. The way the Navy built ships with redundancy in mind, there's bound to be a hand crank around somewhere. However, I also think it would take a ridiculous amount of cranking to get any significant movement, so I sure wouldn't want to try it.
At LBNSY, on a ship check, me being from shop 300, Design, had to get a welder from shop 26 to remove a railing and replace it with a chain for the Sea Sparrow missile batteries. As I remember, the welds you found are the only places where the turrets are held in place. The pins were necessary to keep the rangefinders calibrated, & were removed when deployed.... Also, in a pinch, if suddenly attacked, they would snap if power was applied. P.S.... You could rotate the turret on approximately half the power, provided the pin welds are removed. They’ll just rotate very slowly, and you may run the risk of burning up the motors, but they should rotate... Hope that helps.
I don't think so, due to the fact the contract states the Navy has the option to ask for the ship back. So I really don't think they fixed the guns in a way that would be impossible to undo.
I guess an enigma solved, great work Ryan. What found certainly fits the bill :"Before section 1011 was enacted, the Navy had begun to demilitarize the U.S.S. New Jersey by welding down the training mechanisms of its 16-inch guns. Despite this action, the Navy selected the U.S.S. New Jersey over the U.S.S. Iowa, which had one of its 16-inch gun turrets rendered inoperable, due to an earlier explosion because repair cost estimates for the latter were greater." the text being from GAO Report to Congressional Committees in April 1999. I was suspecting something more elaborate as welding the shaft or gear of a training motor, but this cover all bases.
I kinda wonder if some battleships non-friend ordered them wielded shut to make repairs impractical and thus justify getting rid of the ships, and maybe someone sabotaging that a bit...
I’d love to see a video on the damage done to turret 2 on USS IOWA. I know people aren’t allowed inside that turret out of sheer respect for the deceased sailors but a detailed description of what happened AND the aftermath of destruction would be interesting to have explained. Who’s with me??
I seem to recall reading some time ago that one of the issues with moving the Iowa to Long Beach involved having all of the turret locking pins engaged. Seems that at least one of the pins couldn't be engaged and this held up approval of the move. Don't remember where I read this though.
Some food for thought. Considering the battleship was in mothballs prior to its last reactivation, there has to be a list of things that were done to get it back into working order. It makes sense those documents would be referenced to know what to do, what works, and what does not.
i agree with you, the Navy just did barly enough to decommission a ship, but if there's a itch that only a battleship can scratch it wouldn't take much to correct. then put in drydock to update some things, maybe start making new barrels .
A 300hp motor full load at 480v would be 348 amps. 208v 698 amps. With the ship stationary I'd bet it would take less then 25hp (75 amp at 208v) to rotate the turret. You have plenty of electrical capacity to move them slowly. Chasing a fighter jet with the ship bucking.. not so much.
I’d be curious how many fire rooms would be required to activate enough generators to train the turrets in a combat situation, and ideal situation, ie, all systems normal- no casualties. BZ on the video!
