Battleship Texas, Climbing A Turret 

I think it was the Iowa I saw docked at Treasure Island in the Bay Area while I was stationed at Alameda in the mid 80's.

@@kingscorpion7346 I think that would have been the big J or Missouri. The Iowa and Wisconsin were east coast battleships stationed out of Norfolk.

Same quality of design though yes?

@@CRAZYHORSE19682003 THANKS! I think it was the Mighty Moe, then.

Where you there when turret #2 exploded.

I know its crazy and with the US and Japan competing both are pretty close in design, so your seeing a British Dreadnought in many respects.

@EagleKeeper1916 History, Japan was in line with English similar to America but different. look it up.

As you,r working there everything else is out of sight, out of mind!😅😅

It's bad. I prehydrated with Gatorade, and brought three more quarts plus ice packs and a sweat towel when I shot this.

@@tomscotttheolderone364 I remember my grandfather's stories from WW2 (he was on the Tennessee). I can't even imagine what those poor young men went through living and working in those areas while out in the Pacific with the added heat of the machinery.

You should have filmed these in a cooler month!🥵🥵🥵

I'm often amazed at how similar Texas is to the Iowas while at the same time being amazed at how different they are.

Vastly different! That's what 35 years of engineering evolution is capable of!

@@tomscotttheolderone364 indeed. It would be interesting if pictures could be found to look at how the turrets on the Big 5 (Colorado and Tennessee classes) were designed and laid out. I wonder if they were very similar to the later ships or if they represented yet another evolutionary step between Texas and what we see in the WWII ships.

What struck me as really different was the shells being moved and stored nose-down... Theyd have to be lifted for each movement. But later ships (starting with ??) had the shells sitting nose up and were slid around without being lifted.

@@wheels-n-tires1846 It was definitely more difficult, but the shells didn't require being set down. There were two removable lifting eyes attached to the shell base. Only one at a time would be used to carry a shell on a chain trolley. Changing over to another trolley was a matter of hooking onto the second eye and letting off on the first one.

Your memory serves you well. The following was pulled from Chuck Moore's Battleship Texas Info website; "255 (rounds) from 0550 to 0624, 6 June 1944, Point du Hoc, Normandy France Invasion Average rate of 7.5 shells every minute for 34 minutes" That's extremely difficult to do with an old, manual system.

@@tomscotttheolderone364 That's crazy good!! All that without air conditioning blowing on them keeping them cool.

Sorry, but I don't have any usable videos inside the fighting top, nor is it likely that I will ever go up there again. I can tell you that there isn't anything to see other than a good view of the ship channel and industrial plants in the surrounding area. The Navy stripped all of the equipment out and left them empty. The only evidence of any equipment are the main and secondary director foundations.

A lot of work was done by one volunteer in particular over a number of years to identify stray circuits and make them safe. I won't mention his name for privacy reasons. However, all circuits are still treated as if they are hot as a matter of basic safety. Some of the historic wiring with cambric insulation is used. The insulation is the biggest concern because it gets brittle. However, it can be used if tested with a megger and not moved around or flexed. Little if any historic machinery or motors are used. They are considered artifacts and parts are difficult, if not impossible, to source.

@@tomscotttheolderone364 Sir, Thank you for the reply! I am just just an over-curious engineer, and tend to poke my nose all over any museum ship. My respects to y'all doing great work!

Not a stupid question. There were stops that physically blocked the turret from turning too far. There were also electrical interlocks that tripped if the turret got too close to the stop to shut the training motor off.

@@tomscotttheolderone364 I believe their question had to do with whether there was a safety to stop it from firing while flagging the superstructure of the ship. Something I have also always wondered about as well.

@@swb1m1 There was no safety that would interrupt the firing circuit, and no need for one because there were physical stops that physically limited turret train, thus preventing any portion of the ship's superstructure to be within its firing arc.

@@tomscotttheolderone364 That makes sense for turrets 1, 2, 4, and 5, but how is that done for turret 3? Turret 3 is aimed at the superstructure when the gun is amidships, right?

@@appleintosh Train on turret 3 is limited so that it cannot train forward enough to affect the superstructure. However, that doesn't keep it from being aimed at the mainmast directly aft. I could find nothing to suggest that there was any type of circuit interrupter for the firing circuits when at that angle. However, there was a danger zone system that sounded an alarm called a howler if the turret was trained within that range or close to its stops. Here's a link to a drawing of the circuit. texashistory.unt.edu/ark:/67531/metapth1188062/m1/1/zoom/?q=turret&resolution=6&lat=9372.257690102077&lon=4650.187711333714

I'm glad that you enjoyed the video! The ship is hooked up to utility power, or shore power, to operate lighting in some areas and very importantly, ventilation blowers that circulate air through a number of areas. It is also used to power receptacles in several locations. There is lighting in the lower handling rooms where I shot the video, but not the ammunition magazines, in the rotating structure of the turret or the turret itself. I lit the dark areas with a large led floodlight attached to my camera with a flash bracket. I have never seen a rat, or any sign of a rat or mouse, on the ship. It is likely because there is no food on board other than what the staff bring for lunch, and they are pretty careful about not leaving it laying around.

They lifted the 105 pound bags up and placed them on the platform that the loaders stood on, which was a little over shoulder level. The loaders then picked them up and set them on the loading tray (also called a spanner tray) to be rammed into the gun. It was extremely labor intensive. Each well man and each loader had to lift 2 bags per shot, and during D-Day were doing that about once a minute. The only thing that may have made it easier was I found a gunnery manual that included procedures for that particular turret design. It said that the crews should practice handling dummy bags every day so that they could do it over a period of time without breathing hard.

@@tomscotttheolderone364 Did the bags have handles on them? (I see on the videos Ryan does for the New Jersey, that the powder bags had a cloth handle in the front.) I would seem like they would need something to grab on to lift what for most of them 2/3rds of their own weight in each bag.

BTW, great video. Really enjoy your films.

@@mikeowen9268 They did, but from what I've read in gunnery manuals that included drills, the bags were not to be lifted by the handle. They were used to pull a bag out of its storage tank and perhaps to turn it up on end or steady it. Picking it up, carrying or lifting one was to be done with both arms cradled under it. That would make it extremely hard to lift one up to shoulder level. Since there is no written procedure that I've found that describes a method, it could be that safe ways were created locally and trained into the crew. I don't want to guess what they entailed.

@@tomscotttheolderone364 when bucking square hay bales up over your head you usually use your knee together with a jerk from the arms to get some momentum to get it up above shoulder level where your arms have enough strength to take over and lift it on up. I would imagine that a similar technique would work for the bags but i don't know.

That is a good observation that I hadn't paid much attention to until I started digging in. The two following classes were clearly had improvements, they weren't particularly revolutionary, except for storing shells on rings inside the barbette and the parbuckling system of handling them. The overall shape of the turret houses are similar, but increased in size. A lot of machinery and powder handling upgraded, but didn't change a lot. Major changes were made with the 3-gun, single slide designs for the superfiring turrets on the Nevadas and on the Pennsylvania classes, but I hate to call them improvements. They made some serious compromises to cram 3 guns in a small turret. Much of the equipment that was similar to that on Texas appears to have been removed when their gun elevations were increased to 30 degrees during modernization.

@@tomscotttheolderone364 Have you ever watch "Here Comes the Navy" movie with James Cagney from 1934? I am wondering the scene where they are loading the Arizona's 14 inch guns was real or just something created on a studio lot. I know they filmed part of the movie on the Arizona but it don't look right when watching your videos or the videos of loading the Iowa classes. You can watch it for free on Ok.ru not a great movie but with footage of the Arizona and the doomed Navy airship Macon plus the fleet training base and fleet exercises it is historically interesting.

@@davidrobinson3716 I bought a dvd of it a long time ago, but haven't watched it in at least 10 years. As I recall, much of the loading scene looked reasonably accurate, except for the part where he rolled around on a burning powder bag to put it out. The turret interiors looked very different on the Pennsylvanias compared to Texas. The 3 guns were mounted in one sleeve, meaning that they were all together in the same compartment. Plus, the shell hoists and powder handling was different.

@@davidrobinson3716 I believe there is an article, either on Wikipedia or something else that documents the turret scenes. I believe the entire interior turret scene was scratch built out of wood if i recall correctly.

What you see in the video only applies to early U.S. turret design. The design on Alabama and New Jersey are very different.

I hope to work up "follow the shell" and "follow the powder" videos in the future. The powder flat and transfer room will be in the one for powder. As far as the two objects, yes, that is an immersion tank. There's that one and at least a couple more in the handling room. They are also located in the powder handling rooms and in the powder flat. Any powder bag that had a tear was immediately dumped in a water filled tank along with any loose powder that may have fallen out. That was particularly important for the black powder contained in the ignition patch on the back of each bag. That was the really dangerous stuff. The "coin slot" is where the removable lifting eyes drop to when they are removed from shells. Two are attached to the base of a shell and remain there as the shell is lifted and moved up to the shell deck. They are no longer needed and are removed when they are put on the upper hoist. A shell man then drops them down a tube where they land in the "coin slot" and taken back to the magazine to be reused. The receptacle has a rubber pad in the bottom to keep the eyes from bouncing out and onto the deck.

Interesting to see one of the ubiquitous RCA speakers above the pad eye return slot. Do you know when these speakers were first used by the navy?

All decks, bulkheads and decks were painted steel. None of these spaces in the turrets have been painted since the ship was turned over to the state of Texas in 1948. There has obviously been deterioration since then. BTW, I work very hard to not die in there. :)

That's hard to answer for two reasons. First, what do you consider a battle? Is it one day, like D-Day, or does it include several days or weeks like at Iwo Jima and Okinawa? Second, they did not record salvos, which is generally meant to be two or more guns firing simultaneously. They don't show those, but they do say how many shells were fired during a particular engagement and during the entire campaign. What I can do is give you links that take you to the ship's action reports for the three major engagements of Normandy, Iwo and Okinawa. You will find lists of shells fired within them: battleshiptexas.info/images/Documents/ActionReports/Normandy.html battleshiptexas.info/images/Documents/ActionReports/IwoJima.html battleshiptexas.info/images/Documents/ActionReports/Okinawa.html

Texas.

I think it's turret three?... has a electric motor for running the powder bag hoist,is dated 1903..I'm pretty sure it's the oldest peice of equipment on the ship Found it milling around when I was a kid...probably wasn't supposed to be there but I went alot of places you weren't supposed to as a kid lol

Don't know for sure about gun turrets but on cranes and excavators there are basically two ways to do it. If the upper structure rotates infinitely (like in an excavator or a large crane where it can be rotated in the same direction all day) then slip rings and brushes are used for electricity and a rotary union for hydraulics and air pressure, if the rotation is restricted (usually a little more than a full revolution so when you reach the limit you must rotate in the opposite direction) then simple flexible cables and hoses hanging through the center column can be used as they'll never get too twisted. It seems on a battleship turret rotation would be restricted to less than a full circle anyway by the superstructure and the other turrets so probably just cables.

If you go to 3:20 in the video, I mention that. Electrical power cables, data cables carrying gunnery information and compressed air lines were contained in the center column. There are no special slip rings or brushes. The turrets cannot make a complete rotation. In fact, they were designed to not allow that so that the barrels wouldn't strike the ship's superstructure or adjacent turret barbettes. Off the top of my head, the maximum train for any of the turrets on Texas is about 300 degrees. For that reason, all that was needed was for the cables in the center column to have enough slack to follow the rotation.

@@tomscotttheolderone364 Makes sense, thank you! I'm surprised cables were allowed to twist and turn like that, but I guess it works!

@@robertbcope A lot of it depends upon how the cable was stranded. While I don't know the specifications of the cable they used, I do know that heavy gauge flexible cables meant for industrial purposes use large bundles of very small twisted strands that are in turn twisted together. It's a twisted set of finely twisted cables. This makes a cable extremely flexible with little fatigue. That trick has been know for 100 years or more. My concern would be how flexible the cambric insulation they used was. It's an impregnated cloth fabric that gets brittle and flakes over time. I have not seen the loops or slack where the majority of flexing takes place, but I assume that the larger the amount of slack or the loop is, the less any one section of it moves or flexes and fatigues.

Good question! The cups, or chocks, that shells were stored on were designed so that the shell was supported on on its thick wall, just behind where a fuse would be if one was installed. It was also tall enough to keep the point of a fuse from touching the deck beneath it. However, none of that was an issue. Shells of all types came from the depots with base detonating fuses preinstalled in their bases and a plug installed in the nose that was fully capable of supporting the weight of a shell. Timer and point detonating fuses were only installed in the nose of the shell after it was in the turret and on either the dump tray or rammer tray. The only thing the nose of the shell touched after the fuse was installed was the target!

The paint is what was used at least during WWII. I cannot answer the extent that it was used throughout the Navy.

You are very welcome. No turret has been trained in the 73 years it has been a museum ship. It is exceptionally unlikely that any ever will be. There are too many things that could be damaged to try it now.

If you go to 12:25 in the video, you will see the silver tray that powder bags slid on when they entered the gun pit. The two well men could sit or lay on those and be out of the way of the gun during firing. That position placed all recoiling parts behind them. The only part of the gun assembly they would come in contact with from that position was the bottom of the slide that the elevating screw just ahead of them attached to. Even at its fastest elevating speed it would simply push them out of the way, and it sat perfectly still during firing.

630" bore length, 642.5" overall length. It doesn't include the 12.5" deep screw box that the breech plug engages.

@@tomscotttheolderone364 Retired machinist here. How was a Welin Breech Block machined. I just cannot figure it out, especially with the technology available over 100 years ago.

​@@paschaldobbins8430 I have absolutely no experience with machining, but I'm still awed at the precisely cut matching staggered threads and smaller cutouts. What is really amazing is there are very few machine marks on any of it. I would love to be with an old master machinist who didn't grow up with cnc equipment to hear a detailed analysis of what it would take to machine the plug and screw block assembly.

Good question. All large caliber naval shells came from a shore based ordnance facility with base mounted fuses already installed. This presented no safety issue due to their design that required a combination of the shell accelerating at more than 1,000 g's of force combined with spinning to more than 5,000 rpm to arm them. In fact, the manuals clearly stated that base fuses were to never be removed or altered on the ship without specific authorization by the ordnance department. The only fuses that could be attached on board the ship were nose mounted fuses, called point detonating fuses. These were either impact fuses whose purpose was to improve the reliable explosion of a shell on impact, or timer fuses used to detonate a shell to obtain an air burst above a target like troops and trucks. Those fuses were installed by the gun crew with the shell on the loading tray, just before being rammed into the gun breech.

The barrel is only painted from the point where it extends out of the face of the turret. Inside the turret, the barrel is completely enclosed within the slide, neither it or the slide are painted. I would assume that they kept those surfaces wiped with light oil or some other preservative when the ship was in service. That wasn't practical once the ship was retired and moved to Texas. As bad as it may look, the corrosion is largely cosmetic.

@@tomscotttheolderone364 You can tell that the rust is just surface rust. It would probably take 10 people, three to four weeks to clean every surface.

Пожалуйста!

I haven't found any record of what the lockers were used for. If I had to make a guess, probably miscellaneous stores. It would be a very good place for keeping small tools and consumables like lube oil, rags, etc. One drawing from the early 1930's made reference to midshipman berthing and study spaces, but I don't like that. First, there are a lot of drawings out there that were proposals not used and that nothing on it suggest that it was any more than that. Determining whether or not drawings were used can be tough at times. In this case, there simply isn't the deck space for berthing, desks, clothes lockers, etc. The overhead is very low in 1, 3 and 5. I am 5'10" and constantly bump my head on things on that level. Lastly, there are no berth racks or hammock hooks in any of them, nor have I seen any attach points or welding ghosts from where they may have been installed then removed. I'm not sure about your last question regarding why the additional shell storage. If you are asking why do that in turrets 2 and 4, here's my theory. Understand the following is based upon a brief comment on in a drawing or manual. I don't remember which. For that reason, this explanation is strictly my opinion. They had to have handling shells for regular training and loading practice. They would never use live rounds for that. They also had to have inert rounds to fire during target practice and qualifying. You don't want to consume space meant for live rounds, nor do you want these rounds to be in the way if you are in combat. The circle deck storage makes perfect sense in that scenario. They are out of the way in that location and there's no big rush to deploy them for practice or target firing, plus no truly valuable magazine space is consumed by them.

@@tomscotttheolderone364 thanks. I’m sorry I realized that my second question didn’t come out right. What I meant to ask is on turrets 1,3 and 5 why they didn’t use that space for shell storage like they do on 2 and 4? Storing shells on those flats makes perfect sense and that obviously how it was done on the later ships. Was it because the low overhead and nose down storage method makes that space impractical for that use? Thanks again for these videos and your replies.

@@jetdriver The flats on later ships were specifically designed as storage for shells, so they were a primary design consideration when laying out their turret rotating structure. This level on Texas' turrets was primarily a space filler and any other function was secondary. You are right about the height on the three lower turrets. There isn't the physical room for the combined height of the shell, the length of a chain trolley used to move it, plus the height needed to provide clearance above the deck to lift and move a shell. Since later designs stored shells on their bases and used parbuckling to move them, the overhead height requirement was much less. One must also consider the effect of the weight added to the rotating structure caused by shell storage. Storing as many as 100 shells on the rings on later designs added at least 1.2 million pounds to what had to be supported and rotated. That meant greatly increasing the structure below the turret rollers, increasing roller strength and increasing the size of the training motors from 25hp on Texas to 50hp on the Nevadas.

Been there, nothing to see except a view of the ship channel and industrial landscape that surrounds the ship. The compartments were stripped down to bare decks and bulkheads of all their equipment by the Navy before being handed over as a museum ship. However, an owl did find its way inside a few years ago. It used the space as a roost, and left a pile of mouse and other small animal bones left behind.

Anything I have isn't worth publishing. With the exception of a phone panel, the position was completely stripped of all equipment by the Navy prior to donation as a museum ship. The only thing worth seeing is the view consisting of the Houston Ship Channel and San Jacinto monument and battleground.

The Battleship Texas Foundation Instagram has some photos posted on 10/2/2020.

Yes, that allowed the hoist operator who controlled the hoist here on the shell deck with the hoist man directly above in the turret. The telegraph in the video frame simply allowed the turret hoistman to ask for the hoist to be raised or lowered. The voice tube would allow better information such as type of shell on hoist, status, etc. You can see the approximate location of the upper end of the tube at 13:38 The voice tube is directly behind the top of the shell hoist seen in the foreground.

@@tomscotttheolderone364 ​ Thank you for taking the time to reply. I toured Battleship Texas this past weekend (3/27/22). I'm sure you know that that was the last weekend that it was going to be open to the public before preparations to tow it to Galveston for major renovations. There was too large a line at the time to get into the #1 turret so I figured that I'd see if there was a video available. Your video series showed me much more than I was able to see during the tour. I thank you for that.

@@SRFDriver you’re welcome. I was standing outside of turret 1 from 8:00 to 1:00 on Sunday talking to folks in line. Too bad you didn’t at least stop by!

@@tomscotttheolderone364 I had a 1pm ticket but may have actually arrived a little later than that...I wound up parking up on the road--by the time I got to the bow there was a volunteer gentleman up there talking to a couple who were asking about volunteering opportunities. Being the curious type I was interested in finding the answer to something that I've wondered about for years-- how the main gun barrels are plugged. But the gentleman was busy so I just walked over, reached up and felt the bolt head in the center of the plug on the left gun on the #1 turret and found that the bolt head was hexagonal. So my guess is that they use expanding plugs like aftermarket freeze plugs. I may have answered question number one of a thousand questions that I have! I hope that when they reopen her to the public more of the ship will be made accessible to the public. Have the powers that be any idea when she is likely to be moved? I wouldn't mind being there to see that.

Lighting was pretty good when the ship was in service, certainly better than it is now. As far as noise, all machinery in these rooms were run with electric motors, so I don't know that it was that loud, except for the ventilation blowers. While there were likely some accidents, safety was paramount for them. Drill manuals that define procedures and practice clearly demonstrate that. However, there is always a certain level of danger involved when moving shells around.

The noise level wasn't as loud as you may think. Veterans who worked in those positions said that the actual gunfire could be heard, but wasn't particularly loud. The reason was the muzzle blast was on the opposite side of 14" thick armor. What they did hear was the loud sound of the ventilation blower right beside them, and the swooshing sound of the recoil buffer, like a giant shock absorber, as it compressed when the gun fired. There was also a loud clang noise as the gun returned from recoil as it was pushed by four sets of big counter recoil springs.

@@tomscotttheolderone364 Thank you, Tom. I was also wondering how cramped the gun pit was when the gun was fully elevated.

​@@gerry343 It was pretty cramped. The loader's platform that the two loaders above the pit stood on lowered into the pit when the gun elevated. The two pit men had to move forward of that area and typically laid on the silver powder tray to stay away of it. You can see more about crew positions and duties in this video: ru-vid.com/video/%D0%B2%D0%B8%D0%B4%D0%B5%D0%BE-PC9g9WkDS-4.html

@@tomscotttheolderone364 Thank you again. As I wrote in another comment, I was just so surprised at the number of men involved in handling the shells and powder all the way up from the magazine to the gun breech.

Yes, I am aware of that. I prefer to use a functional definition so that I wouldn't have to define what a rheostat is.

It was primitive compared to British and later US powered systems, but it actually worked pretty well. Not only was it simpler and more reliable, the crews were physically trained to pass bags at a high rate and could do so for extended periods.

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@@tomscotttheolderone364 Tom Scott, the man of the red shirt and you, Tom Scott, The Older One

I've been in all of the turrets and have settled on 1 and 2 for videos. They are in better condition, are more complete and easier to get in and out of.

3 had the catapult,wish they could find that hardware somewhere so it could be mounted for posterity

@@joshuamitcham1519 I agree. That has been the wish of curators, staff and volunteers for decades.

Most likely because it is rusted in some areas due to not being maintained as an operational ship for around 75 years. Volunteer hours and state funding only go so far and there are higher priority areas for preservation and repainting.

Yes, it's well made. The guys that designed and installed wiring knew exactly what they were doing. Some conduit is used, but typically only where there is a direct danger of physical damage. The majority of wiring in most commercial and military ships is open for a variety of reasons. On a military ship where there is a possibility of battle damage, it makes it much easier to identify and repair as opposed to multiple wires in a section of conduit that has been crushed or blown open.

@@tomscotttheolderone364 Thank you Tom, I was not aware of that reason. Makes sense.

Testing indicates that the paint is not lead based, but the underlying primer is. The primer generally seems to stick pretty well.