We're going to take a deep dive into one of the very complicated boiler rooms on Battleship Texas. It's on the long side, but it should be well worth your time if you are a battleship geek!
I was surprised by how good the boiler rooms look considering they spent 20 years flooded. Considering the damage that sea water can do, she actually held up remarkably well.
As I was watching this, it occurred to me that my Father in law, who worked engine and boiler rooms in the Merchant Marine, back in the 30s, would have dearly loved to see, what would have been, old fashioned engineering back then and see what had changed and what hadn't. It's sad he didn't live to have You Tube. I found it all fascinating, such genius without a computer in sight.
As a Stationary Steam Engineer, it kills me to see the Boiler Room in that shape. But considering what it has been through it could be worse. I wish I lived nearby. I would want to put together a crew of SSEs and dig into that and put it back as it should be. Great video as always. Keep up the great work sir.
I can imagine a lot of training would be needed to learn it all. The Cheif Engineer would certainly have to had years of knowledge! I'm blown away by how complicated it looks even designing it on the drawing board let alone operating it! Great video and also explains to me why she looks rusty. A shame she got flooded but glad to see her preserved.
I always tried to avoid engineering on the New Jersey. I qualified as an EOOW and was Chief Engineer on a minesweeper. One tour as an engineer was enough for me. Great job as always Tom. Thanks!
All the stages of fuel preheating, even going back to the bunker tanks, helps me understand why it took as much as 10 hours to "raise steam" for engine power.
Fuel heating wasn't the problem. The biggest issue was gradually heating the refractory brick that lined the inside of the boiler firebox. Heat it too fast and it would start flaking and crumbling. Do that and the best you could hope for was that you may be able to operate the boiler at a very low level so that you didn't burn through the casing. Then, back to a shipyard where the firebox could be relined. If the entire ship steam system was cold, it had to be gradually heated. There are a lot of expansion joints that would leak like sieves if not properly warmed up.
Another awesome video. It’s interesting to me how much open space there is in those boiler rooms. A byproduct I suspect of her conversion from coal to oil fired. The newer machinery was almost certainly much more compact. I’d love to see a video that reviews the armor layout of this ship. Since she wasn’t an “all or nothing” ship I suspect it’s considerably more varied and complex than later ships.
Not only Texas, but also the standards had large areas dedicated to boilers, even though they were designed for fuel oil. The primary difference with the later ships was that each boiler had its own individual room.
I now have a better understanding of a lot of first hand accounts of historical written books of what happens in a engine room during battles during both wars. Thank You TOM!!
Thank you very much. Always wanted to see what it looked like down below. Seeing the rooms and their equipment in their current state is truly appreciated.
Very informative. I imagine a fair amount of wire brushing and sanding required to get that room cleaned up. Thanks very much for the great video, Tom.
Thank you again! I would love to have you as a guide on a tour of the engineering spaces after the Texas has been through dry dock. You really know how to make a complex topic understandable.
That was a senior enlisted position that had very direct responsibility for the health and welfare of the boilers. One screw up and the boiler is reduced to very expensive junk.
It was so neat to get to go on the hard hat tour many years ago. Unfortunately the engine rooms were closed for renovation.. Seeing the boiler room, dynamo room, and power distribution was a really awesome experience.
Hi Tom, it must have been quite an art starting the boilers up from cold with the diesel oil. I've been in a factory that made oil burners for very large merchant ships boilers and at full pelt they really throw out some heat, like a gigantic blow lamp.. The ones I saw on test used a spinning bronze cone to vaporise the really thick crude oil they were fed with - even still had sand in it. The expensive cones wore out and had to be replaced as a result. BobUK.
I feel spoiled with the modern equipment we had on USS camden. Steam atomizers so no need for oil heaters. electronic controls. forced draft boilers, only one reciprocating pump, etc etc.
Good lord. I sincerely wish she could still steam and maneuver. Such a shame she's not kept in ready condition. Not for war, mind you but just so she can sail on her own power. Imagine the people that would love to actually sail on Texas.
i would love to get in there and painstakingly spray a fine directional mist of diesel over all the rusting parts, possibly followed by a jet washing, followed by a wipe down with a wax oily filled rag, it would be a great way to bring the colour back, get rid of the dirty rusty look and preserve all the surfaces which can be easily kept clean for the future on the whole i am pretty surprised how good everything looks, but it be fantastic to bring it back to life without massively stripping down, cleaning, repainting so few parts and still have a mass of dirty looking areas - it could be done for a lot less than you'd think - i've done similar on aircraft and managed to keep them looking good with little upkeep after
Yet another fabulous video! One question I don’t recall if you answered in the steam video, feedwater level control in the boiler. Was there a rudimentary automatic boiler level control?
Thanks for the compliment. One would think that it wouldn't be that hard to cook up some type of automatic control, but I've never found any sign of one. Technical descriptions of the Dyson design and steam manuals of the period indicate that it was strictly manual control with the water tender watching the sight glasses on the steam drum. One publication that covered issues with water tending may suggest why. These boilers responded very rapidly to increased firing and even though cranking them up would increase water consumption and require increasing feed water, not at the moment heat was turned up. A rapid heat rise on the generating tubes would initially push water up them due to rapidly expanding gasses and increase the water level in the steam drum. After a short period, the gasses would work up the tubes, the water level would drop and feed water would then need to increase. If you increased water too soon the surge would add to it and likely create priming that sent liquid water into the steam system. Very, very bad. If you saw the sudden surge in water when heat was increased and immediately cut back feed water, the cutback would combine with the following sudden drop to uncover boiler tubes and instantly damage them. A good water tender knew to keep his hands off the feed water valve for a short period, then start adding water as he watched the level start dropping. I am not sure how auto feed systems in the 1930's and '40's worked, but it would take a lot of sophistication for a mechanical analog design to be able to account for those situations.
Very educational, the ship and maybe other like her had a some safe and emergency system in them. But I learn that in battle that a ship ran on half and standby. That is half of the ship is up and running at half while the other half is operating a low for stand by. In battles one side of the ship is firing at the targets but is also that side is expose to enemy fire. So if that side of the ship gets badly damage, they can quickly switch power over to the other side. One note and not sure if Mr. Scott can cover it and that is emergency steering, that is if U.S.S. Texas has one or not. That if the bridge gets blown away or loose control, the ship can be steer from the engine room ( my father was a sailor on U.S.S. Makin Island).
No, that is not the way it worked. They never held half the engine power or steam mains on standby. There was no good reason to hold one engine on standby. The entire goal was one of damage control. The two engines were operated together and almost always took identical speed commands from the bridge, but they were fed by separate steam systems, divided between port and starboard sides when in battle condition. The only reason for dividing it was so that if there was serious battle damage, you wouldn't lose everything. The worse that could happen is that you would lose one side or the other, but not both. Once they could determine the location and nature of the damage, they would isolate it and bring undamaged boilers back on line. If, for instance, there was a rupture of the port steam main between the boiler rooms and engine room, the port side boilers' valves to that main would be closed and cross connects opened so that they fed into the starboard steam main. That way, you could have close to full steam available, even though it would only be on the starboard steam main. The port engine would have its port main steam cutoff valve closed and a cross connect steam line coming from the starboard engine room would be opened. That would allow both engines to operate on the undamaged starboard main steam line until repairs could be made to the port line. By the way, while nothing is impossible in battle, it was unlikely that a steam main could take a direct shell hit. They were well protected behind the belt armor, two voids and at least one fuel tank. The only real possibility would be a high angle plunging shot through the relatively thin deck armor. There were five locations from which the ship could be steered. The navigation bridge (steam and electric), the armored conning tower (steam and electric), central station (steam only), at the steam steering engine (steam only) located at the aft end of the starboard engine room, and aft steering at the far back end of the ship (electric and manual).
@@tomscotttheolderone364 That I learn which goes to prove those sailors were well train and skillful. As for me, I will make mistakes, and admit being wrong.
First of all I want to thank you. Your videos are the most interesting and informative. I watch all of your videos and just eat the information you give. It is just most interesting. I find that I'm mostly interested in fuel oil system, it is very complex. I did see all of your videos, about one thing I have a question. Sorry for my english, I'm from Finland. So maybe the answer was in the videos, but maybe I just did not understand. So the question is about recirculating. I can see and know how it works. But does every tank have own pumps? Or is there only main pumps? If it's only main pumps, and there are in use different size tanks. How it's made sure that each thank in use have correct amount of return flow so that smaller tank wont overflow? Thank you again for your videos and forgive me my english.
FIrst, thank you very much for watching my videos! Also, there is absolutely nothing wrong with your English and thank you for the very good questions! As you may recall, each boiler room has a booster/recirculate pump. These were used to pump fuel at a constant pressure through an initial set of heaters, the fuel into service tanks where it was stored at an elevated temperature before being pumped at a high pressure using service pumps through a last heater stage and to the boilers' burners. Any one of the three booster pumps could maintain enough flow to satisfy the needs of all six boilers, so they could either run together to pump fuel to the service tanks, or one or two could be used to recirculate unused fuel back to the fuel tanks. That was the most likely way of running them. They never had to worry about return flow overfilling a tank since fuel was returned only to the tank that it was taken from. So, two things happened. First, heated fuel returned to a tank gradually heated all of the fuel in the tank, making it easier to pump and handle. Second, fuel level in the tank would gradually lower until it ran out. They could estimate with pretty good accuracy when that would happen using flow meters, so it would be an easy matter to switch suction to another tank before that happened to maintain uninterrupted flow. It gets really interesting when the ship was in combat, because they only used 6 tanks that were called battle tanks. These were very well protected and held a great deal of fuel that would easily last a day under most conditions. This allowed them to shut off the other 86 tanks and their fuel lines so that they wouldn't interfere with the boilers if they were damaged or contaminate fuel with sea water if they leaked. If battle tanks started getting low, they could use one of the booster pumps to move fuel from a closed off tank to refill them.
my dad was a BT3 (when he got out) 51-55 on a DE and then an APD. he fell through some of that grating that a fellow BT or water tender, had left out of place, when they lost all lights during a ship to shore power switch over. he still suffers from a bad back and kidney at age 92. with the current dry docking, will any of the interior refurbishment be undertaken?
One thing to remember if there was an uncontrolled fire in the engine room those hatches would be dogged shut with sledgehammers so no one could get out
Was their any sort of big failures or catastrophic story’s from one of the boiler rooms? Always loved hearing those event story’s. Being a Millwright who works on these kinds of things in a industrial setting I couldn’t imagine hearing something from one of a beast like this. Hope you’re doing well Tom. I can say I rewatch your videos more than any RU-vid channel watch. I truly can’t wait to see this ship I love steam engines and have a few live steam models I tinker with so this definitely tickles the fancy lol.
Thanks for the compliments. I am not aware of any major problems with the boilers. They may suffer small problems, but they were pretty safe if properly maintained and operated.
The boiler rooms certainly were. Any telephone conversations had to happen in a sound proof booth. Congratulations for using "cacophony", it's the word of the day! :)
@@tomscotttheolderone364 As a old BT, I started out on the A type boilers (USS Piedmont AD 17) which were just a little more modern than the ones on the Texas, went to the M type, USS Meredith (DD890) and USS Midway (CV41) then to the 1200 D types before I retired in 95. Watching your vid shows the start of the modern steam engineering plant. So much is the same. BTW the 3 element feed water control valve was first used on the 600 psi M type boilers, but a checkman controlled the water level, and the automatic control valve was only for battle stations in case the checkman was hurt or needed to control damage.
@@johnchilds6471 Thanks for the input on the use of auto control. I have a few more years of learning on Texas before I spread out to newer technology!
If money was no object could this ship, be brought into a condition where it could run under its own power. I'm just curious. I'm sorry if I sound like a big dummy.
It's a perfectly legitimate question that has been asked many times. The cheap answer is that anything can be done given enough money and time. A realistic answer is that it would likely be cheaper to built an entirely new ship that is a replica. It could include modern equipment and designs that is more serviceable, more reliable and safer. The ship is first and foremost a museum and memorial to those who served. The problem with actually trying to restore her is that there are no parts to repair or directly replace boilers, steam lines, pumps and a multitude of other equipment. Replacing, repairing or modifying them would significantly alter them. This would destroy her historic fabric and she would no longer be an historic artifact, just a big, old resto-modded ship. For that reason alone, any effort along those lines would never be considered, even if the 100's of millions of dollars in needed funds was available.
She was last under steam in February 1946, then placed in reserve and officially decommissioned in April 1948. The ship's systems were state of the are in the early 1920's and were complicated, but not too difficult for a well trained crew.
The BB Texas is the last dreadnought this the "Old Man" of warships and justly resides in the creator of the New World,,, another "Old Man" circuit of life.
Thank you for your comment. I appreciate getting feedback from guys who ran this stuff. I agree that "fire room" is the most commonly term found in tech and engineering manuals that go back to 1900. However, every one of Texas' ship's plans, from her 1912 builder's plans to the 1944 booklet of general plans, refers to them as "boiler rooms". "Boiler room" is also what is on the brass plates above each of the doors that lead to the rooms on the battleship. For those reasons, I figure either term is acceptable.
