Battleship Texas, Diving Into the Belly of the Beast! 

Excellent comment!!! They certainly experienced the same situation. Powder and shell hoists for either the 5" or 14" guns were controlled from above so that those positions could take it as it was needed; no more and no less. So like you, the hoist gets loaded up and then you wait until they signaled and started the hoist. Then its full tilt asses and elbows!

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Thank you, but there are a couple of the other guides I'd rather follow than me!

That’s why she was donated all those years ago. She was worn smooth out when she shelled Normandy in 1944, then she went to help finish the war in the Pacific and was really knackered then. Things only got worse after that because of the way she was moored the first 30 or 40 years as a museum ship. She was basically scuttled in a mud bog.

While it is somewhat harsh, that is probably the best 3 sentence description I've read regarding the reasons for her condition. My only disagreement is pretty much a matter of nuance. She was reasonably serviceable throughout the war; however, she did not see any yard time during the last 12 months of her service in the Pacific, during which she was "ridden hard and put up wet". As a result, the ship was starting to suffer noticeable mechanical issues and her problematic torpedo blisters were leaking pretty badly. The Navy's attitude that they weren't going to spend any of their overstretched resources on a worn out dreadnought than was necessary was certainly understandable. It would also have been easier and more cost effective to sink or scrap her as was done with all of the other older battleships. That would have certainly happened of not for the a concerted effort made by a number of influential Texans, including Admiral Nimitz, that led to the successful effort to get her.

I know what you mean, but it seemed appropriate to me after climbing and squeezing through some really tight spots.

Kinda figured the ole BB & caves would have something in common. Seeing Ryan on the New Jersey in some tight spots. The Texas is far older & even harder to get to some places. @@tomscotttheolderone364

I understand and agree with your sentiment. Understand that most of the flooding occurred due to conditions that came from decisions made by the Navy when the ship was being prepared for donation in 1948 and by decisions made by the new owners to flood tanks and voids to settle the ship in her new berth back then. This set up conditions that caused flooding and corrosion that simply could not be completely resolved until now.

Thanks, but I think the current v.p. of operations has me beat on both counts!

The compartments in this video are well inside the hull, so reaching them from the outside isn't possible. What you suggest sounds good for outer compartments, except outer hull shell was removed only in places where the plating was too thin to be reliable for another few decades. Cutting away enough plating and framing to do what you suggest would be highly destructive and prohibitively expensive, especially since at least 90% of the hull has a double bottom.

Proposals for doing just that were developed between 2005 and 2010. Unfortunately two things defeated the plan. It was too expensive and the operators of San Jacinto Battleground where the ship was moored since 1948 successfully lobbied to not allow the ship to return as a condition of the funding for current repairs.

Thank you for being here and and showing your interest in Battleship Texas! I spent a couple of weeks in an advisory capacity at National Steel and Shipbuilding in the early '90's. It was what jump started my interest in ships and led to my involvement in Battleship Texas. To answer your question, Battleship Texas was known as hull #147 when built at Newport News Shipyard in Virginia. First steel for the keel was laid on April 17, 1911. She was launched on May 18, 1912 and commissioned on March 12, 1914. While it is extremely unlikely that he served on Texas, the following link will take you to the beginning of a complete crew roster in the back of the ship's WWI cruise book called "North Sea Days". Scroll through it, and you may get lucking and find his name. www.gwpda.org/naval/txnseady/109.htm

You better allow two weeks and pack a few lunches!

One wonders how you look when you're 11 decades old and nobody's shown you much love for more than half that

I appreciate your enthusiasm, but it it much more difficult, time consuming and expensive than that. Even the simplest of spaces will cost 10's of thousands of dollars and weeks or months of work to repair. Much of what you see here includes lead primers that require remediation by licensed contractors. Once that is done, there will be steel repairs to decks, bulkheads and structures, and cosmetic restoration of objects in the rooms, like ammo hoists before any painting takes place. Before doing any physical work, there must be the creation of restoration plans and work orders for each compartment that details the condition of each space, its history, and specifications of the materials to be used and how the work will be done. There are unfortunate examples on board where that level of detail wasn't done and the result was loss of artifacts and historical information.

@@tomscotttheolderone364 yep, appreciate what you have to do, but you definitely have areas, empty storage rooms that would be pretty simple to do, even with all the shelving that was for some time below water and now resembling a tea bag, many of the spaces i see in the videos look pretty water tight now, so collecting and filtering would not be an issue, everything is doable, i have a colleague who does tanks this way, its pretty hard going as its a large job but working in very tight spaces - once the smaller rooms are done, its rather like a puzzle, begin joining them together, i have seen the external surfaces of a large tank done in a day, that's a fair bit of square meterage with lots of nooks and crannies, aqua blasting is a far more affective way, no chemicals etc, just the residue of the old lead paint, very easily collectable and that possibly takes more time to deal with than the actual blasting - ps, certification doesn't come much higher than the people who design the kit

What a fun question for which I have absolutely no valid answer. I can tell you that the ship's average waterline changed by 1" for every 96 tons (192,000 lbs) of change in displacement. So, as a completely uneducated guess that is unencumbered by facts, perhaps 20,000lbs. If that is anywhere close to reality, then maybe something between 1/16th and 1/8th inch.

@@tomscotttheolderone364 Ok, you got me going down the rabbit hole here. I calculated a very rough estimate of 2700 pounds for the external surface area of the ship. (Length x2) X (draft + air draft guess x2) + beam, divided by 550 sq ft for the paint and primer per gallon can, multiplied by 8 pounds per can. Then maybe you could take a guess at how much internal surface area is by subtracting the armor plus any non metal there is from the total weight of the ship. Then figuring out the average thickness of the internal bulkheads. Then adding 2700 for the inside of the outside lol

No, everything you see was shot prior to August 31, 2022. I am not allowed to shoot video on the dry dock for several reasons that I am in complete agreement with. The other issue is that getting up to the ship's main deck currently requires climbing a 50' tower with many stair landings that sits next to the ship on the dock. I have climbed it once and have no desire to do it again!

Thanks for the response. @@tomscotttheolderone364

Yes, at least periodically. That is why the deck is rusted through and there is very heavy corrosion within a couple of feet of deck level in the compartments close to the end of the video. They are directly over the emergency diesel generator space that was completely flooded for decades. You will see that in my next video that tours the compartments on the hold deck beneath everything in this video.

I have not done anything on that. It's a good idea, except that I have no knowledge on the subject.

The tours aren't cheap, so we really appreciate you doing that and we're especially glad that you liked it. Your donation went directly into repairs that aren't funded by the big bucks dedicated to hull repairs. These include restoration of the 5", 3", 40mm and 20mm guns currently being repaired in an off-site facility.

@@tomscotttheolderone364 Glad to help, great channel!

Yep!

It isn't well documented, but those particular sizes were typically packed in wood shipping cases. It only makes sense that they would have been stored in that condition in these spaces. Here's my take on how it worked from there. The hoists aren't large enough to take shipping cartons, so ammo would be unpacked and sent up them to the second deck where the majority of the hoists stopped. From there bulk 20mm would have been loaded into drum magazines in clipping rooms, then hand carried to ready lockers close to the gun mounts. 40mm would have been hand carried to clipping rooms located close to mounts and to ready racks mounted to the inside of the gun splinter shields.

They all had some form of electric lighting; however, very few of the fixtures and wiring have survived the flooding that occurred in aft part of the ship. I can tell you that surviving lighting in areas close to the bow provides reasonably good illumination in similarly small spaces. It isn't a lot, but it is adequate for tasks like storage and ammo handling that didn't require seeing fine details. As someone who has 40 years of experience in the lighting industry and lighting design, my educated guess is they typically provided between 10-20 foot/candles of average illuminance. It would be difficult to read a book with fine print under it, but it is adequate when reading stock numbers, identifying color coding on artillery shells and carrying them to hoists.

@@tomscotttheolderone364at last, a hint as to what your past profession was!😉 I’ve always been a bit curious.

Yes, and that has been used for decades in upper levels. However, it doesn't work well in the multitudes of lower spaces and when there is a constant source of either water or extreme humidity created by flooding.

A few are being addressed where the hull work uncovers damage. There is also work being done on the foremast at the navigation bridge and air lookouts to repair and restore structural and deck problems. Other than that, work will be done on the interior after she comes out of dry dock and as funding becomes available.

The hatch that I used to descend to the compartment is too small to take the desk. Without looking at it, I can only assume that it was disassembled, lowered and reassembled.

What you asked is something I considered, but going into that detail would have greatly increased the length of a video that is already too long. I haven't come across any drawings or details of racks or shelving on Texas to know exactly how it was done, but I have what I think is a pretty good guess. 20mm and 40mm ammo was bulk packed in wood crates for handling and storage. My best answer is that is how it was stored in those spaces. My reasoning is that all of the 3", 40mm and 20mm deck mounts had clipping rooms or ready ammo lockers close to each that provided ammo as needed while in combat. I feel it likely that ammo was likely broken out of the wood crates and sent up the hoists to fill clipping or ready rooms so that it was available for immediate use. Another reason for them to do it that way was a deficiency in Texas' design. All hoists for those compartments only travel up to the second deck where the 5" gun mounts they originally served were located. That means that ammo going to lockers and clipping rooms on the main deck stopped at second deck. It was then carried by hand up ladders or pushed though deck scuttles to ready lockers and clipping rooms. This was very labor intensive and could lead to shortages during prolonged action if lockers ran low, but it apparently worked okay since there are no comments in action reports complaining of running out of ammo at any AAA mount. On the other hand, it would have been pretty nasty if a clipping room full of ammo had been struck by enemy fire.

@@tomscotttheolderone364 *Suddenly I have a new perspective on naval battles, or at least the late war desperate actions to repel air attack. Imagine the blue jackets in these stowage & issuing spaces frantically opening boxes- & the detritus being tossed overboard. Ships in action & after the action surrounded by a sea of flotsam...*

You were there a very long time ago and when the ship had seriously deteriorated. To be fair, North Carolina was a far newer ship that was in almost new condition when she was retired after seeing only 6 years of active service. As cowboys would say, Texas had been ridden hard and put up wet after 33 years of active service. She was worn out and even suffering from a multitude of leaks toward the end of WWII. There were many unfortunate mistakes made with Texas when she was donated by the Navy and by her early operators during her early years as a museum. The result for Texas was suffering from major problems that were impossible to properly address, especially in the 1960's when you last visited her. More than $100 million has been spent in the last 10 years and immense effort is being made to save Texas, restore her most critical systems and create conditions that will allow her to survive another 100 years. Included in the efforts are sustainable fund raising plans and continued restoration throughout the ship. What is especially nice is that North Carolina and the other battleship museums have been able to closely watch progress and learn what they can do in the future to keep their treasures sound for generations.

Thanks! This video took us to the second platform, which is one level up from the bottom, called the hold deck. I will be putting out a video in the near future that goes there.

Good eye! That happens to be the top cover for a Sperry gyro compass that somehow got separated from the one in aft gyro room. A quick story; when I first had a closeup look at the gyro compass, I got all excited and started researching it. This included finding and paying quite a bit for an operating and maintenance manual for it. Once I finished my research and scanned the manual, I donated it to the ship's archives. When proudly handing it over to the curator, I was told that the Sperrys were stuck on board by the Navy after the ship has been decommissioned and therefore, were not considered a historic part of the ship. Man, did that burst a bubble! I also learned to not assume anything on the ship without due diligence.

Yes, there are a small number of veterans who served on board. The youngest is now in his late 90's.