Battleship New Jersey's First Hull Leak 

Can you imagine trying to play hide and seek on the ship with Ryan.

boy i wish the condenser on my old tin can DD 849 was that big it was a tight fit for me back in 1966 when i was 135 lbs

Hi Ryan, another fantastic and entertaining video. Your willingness and interest in getting into all these unusual spaces is as heartwarming as it is informative and amusing; we learn so much from your excursions. With you and the rest of your team, it's clear the magnificent BB New Jersey is in loving and skilled hands. It's a long way from here in Australia, but I hope to be able to visit some day.

Note: The condensing turbine extracts the maximum heat from the steam as work applied to the turbine's shaft. In the process of condensing from vapor to liquid, the water has a much lower pressure than the steam - the molecules move much slower in the condensed phase, so they don't "push" so hard against the walls of the turbine housing. The condensate still needs to be cooled down in order to get it to the optimum / design condition of boiler feed water, and a heat exchanger is used for the purpose. It looks like the Iowa class battleships did not use condensing turbines, because that HX sure does look like a condenser as stated. Whether boiling or condensing, you want your vapor (steam) on the shell side, and your heat transfer fluid - flue gas for the boiler, cooling water for the condenser - on the tube side, because the steam has a much greater specific volume than the other fluid. That tube-sheet - where the tube ends communicate with the heads of the heat exchanger - is an interesting bit of engineering in and of itself.

The hose thing doesn't really relieve the pressure down low. The pressure in the tube gets less and less the closer you get to the water level on the outside, but the pressure increases as you go lower.

Well, that certainly is a disconcerting title

It's amazing to see "old" tech like this. I haven't been on an Iowa class ship, but I did tour the HMS Belfast. It's hard to imagine living on one of these ships. The firepower is amazing. I haven't seen 16" guns up close, but l toured the batteries on Corregidor, where the coastal guns were 12 inches, which seemed huge.

So... why not a high density plastic plug? Next drydocking, manufacture a tightly fitting plug to go into the seachest(s), seal it in place with marine adhesive, maybe put some kind of expander mechanism inside the plug to force it against the sides, then remove and grind off all the dissimilar metal from the blank. If the long term preservation problem is dissimilar metal corrosion, stop using metals where they touch water. The solution only has to stand up to static water pressure, possibly towing speeds, not high speed sailing stresses, and it only needs to last maybe twice the expected time until the next drydocking. This might be a dumb idea, but there must be an engineering reason why it's a dumb idea.

its a terrifying idea that those holes, with a thin rusty metal plug, are an unknown distance away from a black abyss of water. even though youd probably fall out the bottom of the ship, my claustrophobia is acting up bad thinking about it.

Remember that nickel is ferromagnetic. This condenser shell might be some nickel iron alloy selected to be compatible with steam at high temperature and tolerate sea water. Those tubes are pretty small diameter. I guess Uncle Sam had lots of labor to punch them clear as needed. Thanks for the interesting videos.

Another interesting insight into the workings of a battleship. What a job this fella has. Hope he doesn’t get stuck in one those tight spaces he gets into. 👍

super fascinating and a little creepy...claustrophobic and knowing that you're standing in a place that would normally be full of water. hilarious ending too!

Hahaha that was a 20 year old me on the USS Shreveport. We had to do some welding In the condenser on deployment. Someone accidentally opened the valve and it started to flood we had to throw our welder and grinders out of the manhole cover. That condenser looked way better for being much much older then on the Shreveport

Keen in mind when crawling though those hatches the kids in WWII were a lot skinnier than they are now.

Ryan S. is the man! Another absolutely fascinating video... Ive been caught on multiple occasions attempting to steal parts off his boat though! Last time Ryan himself caught me. I got away with a few items but it was largely a bust heist.

Great work , great episode

Ryan, there's a good chance that condenser header is made from Inconel, an iron, copper, nickel alloy that is almost impervious to salt water corrosion.

The condition is called electrolist dthe reaction of disimiliar metals. Use of a softer metal such as lead is used as sacrifice piece such as to combat stainless steel shaft with brass prop. The lead being softer attracts the electrolist action and eats away the lead. Follows the easiest path to ground.

That looks like it could be a permit required confined space. And with those sacrificial anodes and visible rust, you might want to make sure you have a low-o2 alarm on you when going into something like this (or the anchor chain locker). That's the kind of space where all of the oxygen will get pulled out of the air by the rust and corrosion (leaving you with "air" which only has nitrogen and carbon dioxide). This can kill you pretty quick without you realizing it in the right conditions (like just randomly falling asleep). I noticed you seemed to be stumbling on your words a bit while in there which can be a sign of mild hypoxia. I did see what looked like a ventilation hose at the end of the video so I'm hoping there was a supply going to this area while you were working in it.

WHERE HE IS IN THIS VIDEO COULD BE VERY DANGEROUS. DO NOT GO DOWN IN THESE SHIPS WITHOUT CHECKING THE AIR,,,, I WORKED on military ships for 22 years back in early 70's on WW2 ships that were still in service and it surprises me that this guy knows his stuff. Everything I learned about ship building is obsolete. In one year, every tool, press, rollers, instruments, shears, punch, laths,,,,gone,,,and should be, they were 75 years old when I first used them.

When exploring these enclosed areas do you have to worry about air quality?

I definitely don't miss squeezing through hatches to access tanks normally filled with liquid for the purpose of inspection or refurbishment.

Another fascinating video. Thanks!

Outstanding! TY

Cupronickel alloys are ferrous, I have heard, and used in these kinds of places due to their corrosion resistance.

I love how you use the rainbow color and corrosion together. Just gonna leave it right there

Ryan, you need a confined space permit, have the atmosphere monitored by a portable gas tester for safety and have the confined space entrance staffed.

Those tubes are 10 times thicker then normal condensers wow! I leaned enough hvac ones to know the tubes weren't replaced properly because they Are not that many bad yet

The end of that condenser is welded plate. You can see the weld seams in it. The outside sure looks like some sort of bronze, but the magnetic properties of it....I wonder if it is stainless steel?

Great video.. any chance of exploring the ships funnels?

Could be wrong, but......I do believe you're on the discharge side, not the inlet which also has the main circ pump.

Say I'm in a submarine, and I got a water leak into a air filled tank. To fix it, I "poorly" seal off the leak with a plug, and through the plug I put a bypass hose which I lead all the way up to the surface. Now the water pressure against the plug is removed, so the plug manage to keep it watertight . Yeah right... -Or did I miss something in your explanation?

We just want to see you climb out of weird spaces. My guess is that tank is galvanized if it is silvery and magnetic. Or maybe tin plated.

Incredible

Great video.

I have to deal with semi-confined spaces in a Tunnel Boring Machine (TBM ) But that’s too tight for me.. I’d be freakin out

If this steam engine works the same as other ships I've read about, the vaccume pulled by the condenser increases the engine power by haveing a push and a pull force in the cylinder every stroke.

I would like to see the room where the hydro rams are that move the two rudders.

Make sure you keep the steel it is special and expensive. It is made before nukes were used. Special

What are the service intervals on that heat exchanger like? I can't imagine hot seawater is kind to the metal.

Could the casting be nickel bronze instead of copper bronze? If the nickel percentage is high enough, a magnet would stick.

@ 8:36 - Holy birth canal, Batman!

Cool video thank you 🙏 🎉❤

Do you ever worry about going into small non ventilated spaces? There are some horrible stories about people unbolting access covers and dying en mass inside because although there was air inside there wasnt any oxygen which is common for any sealed non-ventilated space

I don't know if that was a curator "springing" into existence as much as struggling to escape the ship. Or like the New Jersey was reluctant to stop hugging you.

I'm interested in knowing which fuel the ship did the best on (Bunker A, Bunker B, and Bunker C Fuel Oil).

I'm getting claustrophobia watching this one!

Thanks guy, interesting to see that. Was the steam entering the condenser at higher pressure than the water in the condenser? Seems to me that if it was not then a leak in the sea water cooling pipes would add salt water to the steaming water and really mess things up fast.

...is there some kind of weekly staff meeting to track a betting pool of "Where will Ryan fit into next?"

Awesome video :)

Come on, RU-vid - why isn’t this monetized?

Is there a video that goes over the use of the optical rangefinder? Like in the director?

I have cleaned out boiler tubes before… and fire boxes. Tight space and dirty job

Would love to see the boilers and steam turbines in a future video

Why do I have the feeling that your cause of death is going to be getting into some place you can't get out of?

Sir, we have a mole in the ship!

Get her into dry dock for repairs Mary Babiec

I wouldn’t crawl in there for all the whiskey in Ireland!!!!

Well it had a good run , time to scuttle ...

its these engineering spaces that really reinforce the notion that a battleship isn't really a ship with big guns, but a giant armored machine to bring giant guns to the enemy

You ought to be able to find a scrap metal dealer with a Positive Material Identification (PMI) "gun" who would be willing to volunteer to identify some of the odd / unknown parts of the ship in return for a little acknowledgement in one of these videos. These are relatively small, handheld X-ray fluorescence analyzers, set up to identify metal alloys.

"So the water thinks this part of the ship is flooded... As much as water can think" Thank you Ryan! That remark put a smile on my face and made me giggle a bit, love that simplistic explanation!

Can you do a series "a day in the life of ____" a cook, a deck hand, engineer, Capitan, whatever it is. Maybe show us how their day went from wakeup till the end of their shift! That seems interesting

Crazy to me that a battleship can have hundreds of openings in the hull, a large ship I was on for a while only had 3 openings specifically to reduce the openings in the hull and help prevent flooding!

I love that it ends in a blooper reel I hope that becomes a thing

You can tell that he is the kind of guy that you would want to sit down and have a drink with and talk for hours about anything, just a good guy

"This is how Battleship curators are born..." Love it Ryan. I flagged down the kids and showed them the curator coming out "fully formed." 🤣

Thanks for taking us to places not on the standard tour!

It's been a while since I was playing around with bronze and brass alloys, but I remember that both could be made magnetic through the addition of just trace amounts of iron _or nickel._ Magnetic brass/bronze alloys are typically still corrosion resistant and will usually simply develop a patina instead of ever rusting away.

I would like to see some well lit "pits of death".

Would love to know if the Navy ordered a manganese-bronze tank but got a ferrous metal tank, and the manufacturer pocketed the difference.

"Sacrificial Anodes" would be a good name for a band.

Giving me flashbacks watching you crawl out of that condenser. I, being of relatively small stature ended up in all manner of places with small openings while I was in the Navy and none were quite as pleasant as that condenser. The nicest was the doing the annual corrosion inspection on the main induction sump (726 class SSBN) the worst was probably either SAN7 or SAN 9 on the same.... yuck

Awesome episode. Did not expect Ryan to be birthed from a condenser

Regarding the plugs, I know we have plugging margin built in for power plant heat exchangers. It's assumed in the beginning that some tubes will be plugged, so we overbuild them and then design with the plugged conditions. I assume they do the same on ships, but could also see a different approach because of space concerns. If we get towards end of life and start to run out of tubes, we'll sleeve tubes in order to nurse them along and that can work pretty well for certain failures. However, a sleeved tube isn't as effective as an original tube, so it's not a perfect answer.

I see I'm not the only one, wondering, so I'll ask too (bang the pots and pans), what's the deal with the rainbow "corrosion" animation?

The steam going into the condenser would not be 800°F. In expanding and doing work, heat is removed from the steam and converted to work. By the time the steam leaves the turbine, it is close to 120°F. Due to the low pressure, it is still steam at that low temperature. For maximum efficiency, the goal isn't to cool the steam at all. It is to just remove the latent heat and convert it to water. Cooling the water further just wastes heat. Also, cool water has higher solubility for oxygen which is bad for the boilers. If you note the gap with no tubes down the middle of the condenser, that is for steam from the turbine to get below the tube bundle. The falling water leaving the tubes will then travel through the steam and re-warm back to the steam temperature while condensing more steam. Doing that helps the efficiency and with the oxygen level in the feed water.

This is the second video I've seen with the "word from our sponsors" cue and no sponsorship message. Is that deliberate?

Ryan you are showing the discharge side on the inlet side has scoop injection along with main circ pump. We used the circ pump in port and sea and anchor details and when we where under a certain speed.

One curator thick, hahaha!

Ryan I've enjoyed your series for over a year. Amazing ship we have nothing like it here in Canada. I'm so impressed with your knowledge. I hope one day I get to see the ship, the engineering is just mind boggling and I feel like the camera just doesn't capture the scale or how solid some things are. The New Jersey must be a world of her own. Thank you for being so awesome.

That area has very nice acoustic ambiance. Please in the future record all voiceovers in this aeea. Your welcome.

Who else what totally taken off guard by the size of the condenser?!

I really appreciate how you had a sponsor from a scam company what you previously worked with, but since learning what they are pulled the ads (in the last bunch of videos). Also, quality of the content is great.

I got the feeling that Established Titles is done!

Get a small air compressor. Attach it to the hose you have on that plug. Fill the sea chest with air so that it bubbles out of the bottom of the hull. Then set it up to have a very small flow into the sea chest from now on(or a very accurate super low pressure regulator will work if set up right). The compressor will have to run occasionally. That way you have no salt water in the sea chest, and no salt water corrosion. A dry nitrogen or argon source would be better, but harder to acquire.

🏳️‍🌈corrosion🏳️‍🌈 😄

Anyone else panic, thinking NJ was headed for the bottom??? Or at least Ryan was starting a bucket brigade???😂

Nice sponsor.

I doubt it's anything major, or they wouldn't waste time making a video, or I hope not hahah

I'm a former boat and ship builder and Certified Welding Inspector. I would be interested to see what those alloys are. Hopefully after I hit my 15 year mark I can sit to become a welding engineer and need to do some serious study into all of that. I have done a fair bit out of interest and find the way metal interact interesting. I would love to hear what you find out about the material. I'm out on an injury and if you ever had a question I could help with it helps to keep me sharp.

All Your bids have been great, but stuff like this is particualarly exciting! Deeper dives into more technical detail are awesome!

I love the curator units of measurement!!

I love these obscure places you bring us. I could never be in the spaces you venture, my claustrophobia would freak me out.

Sir, you triggered my claustrophobia! Thank you for showing me the interior of the sea chest so I didn't have to squeeze my fat old body through those tiny hatches into unventilated spaces and get covered in rust while risking cuts and bruises.

What's up with the rainbow animation and "corrosion" label? Seems like this has been in the last couple videos.

In my much younger days, I would have had no issues climbing into that condenser. I climbed into many tanks in my career. But now, I look at that hatch, and get a real feeling of claustrophobia. Maybe it’s the knowledge that I am no longer as flexible as I once was, or that I have more common sense than I once had.

Have you looked into renting or borrowing an XRF gun (XRay Fluorescence) to see which alloys you have? You can shoot the tank alloy with XRays to see what metallic elements you have but it won't give you carbon content. Then, you shoot the blanks as well as the welds to see what the compositions are to track down which areas have the most dissimilar metals side by side to focus on first when you eventually do go into dry dock.

Imagine when he moves on from the ship or is replaced. He's only a few months away from being more associated with this battleship than any person in its history.

When a curator is born, do they always come out of the sea chest because they're a gem?