Battleship Texas, When All Else Fails! 

Thanks for the info!

I wouldn’t bet against you. A great example of “off the shelf” technology on board is the double effect, solo shell evaporator added late in the ship’s career as an emergency source of fresh water. The same unit was commonly used on destroyers and de’s.

Looked like a Detroit to me as well. It would probably start up after a 30 minute cleanup

I was going to guess it was a smaller Whenten. I am not good at spelling. Whenten is the forefather of the Detroit and the EMD 567, 645 and 710 engines.

@@ryandavis7593 I think it is Winton, but I may be wrong.

You are very welcome! I am very partial to it, especially the dynamo control and feeder protection on the bulkhead that opposes the distribution switchboard. That's where the big stuff lives!

Thank you, you are very kind!

i'm in UK too - well said that man - i say this on a few channels, these videos serve as an important document on how these battleships were used, what does what and the folk that used them - but its also an important piece of history to share with everyone of Tom's vast knowledge and love on the subject, not just the visitors who may get parts of the story here and there, its fantastic to know someone with such a good understanding, future custodians will seldom have the understanding of what made things tick, a gun will be just a gun to them, but Tom clearly shows us every detail, and with the odd corrections put into the footage, i always enjoy a good anecdote here and there too i wonder if the diesel genies have ever been fired up to test the lighting? - its surprising to see these so deep in the ship, you'd think in case of emergency they'd be nearer the top side hidden in the main deck, say in case of sinking, to keep some of the emergency systems running till the end, lighting for example (maybe emergency lighting ran direct from batteries, don't know)

Thanks, Paul. Much of what I know is based only partially on the ability to explore and research. Most is likely is due to learning from others, both staff and volunteers, who came before me!

This is so cool to see her being taken care of, when I watched Texas coming into San Jac in '88 ' 89 there about, I was amazed at her size, then finally got to go aboard. Second deck was the only available touring place on the ship, but. Well worth it! Thank y'all for seeing to her needs.

@michael kennedy Yep...... While I'm not certain I would imagine the generator was installed in her 1924 refit. Consider this for a moment and consider how much power 100kw was back then. Only 20% of the US homes has electricity in 1920 and 68% by 1930 with only 10% of the rural communities having been electrified. Houses that DID have electrical service during those times at most had a 60 amp service. The vast majority of homes during that era were 30 amp services though. Regardless the only voltage available was single phase 120. For those that aren't aware that's only 3.6kW for 30 amp house or 7.2 kW for a 60 amp house. So the USS Texas had somewhere between the power capability to power 28-14 homes of that era, and she had two generators of that size, albeit I'm certain they weren't designed to be run in parallel. Definitely puts everything in a different perspective EDIT: I just ran across something that I figured I would share. Apparently the University of North Texas somehow got a ahold of some engineering drawings for a refit the Texas had in 1943. Kinda cool. texashistory.unt.edu/ark:/67531/metapth1053401/m1/1/

I do not have not seen documentation that firmly sets a date, but I am pretty confident that the two emergency diesel generators were installed in the early 1940's. Primary power came from four 400,000kw steam turbine driven dynamos capable of providing more than 3,300 continuous amps. That was enough to power more than 3,000 homes of the era since the typical house had 100 amp service or less. The university site that you linked two scanned and archived most, if not all, thousands of drawings stored in the ship's archives on behalf of their conservator, Texas Parks and Wildlife Dept.

@@tomscotttheolderone364 3,300 amps at 120 volts is 400 kW or 400,000 watts.

The engine is a General Motors Cleveland 3-268 diesel engine.

You are right if they tried to move it down as a single unit. I assume that it was at least partially disassembled brought down and reassembled. Regardless, it wasn't a simple matter.

That crossed my mind as well. Thanks for asking.

I was just thinking the same thing. It appears the guys who did the layup maintenance on it did a surprisingly good job, especially for a ship they were probably aware wasn't going to return to active duty. Well done to them.

@@robertf3479 In Navy parlance; Bravo Zulu!

Where to place equipment on a ship always has been and always will be a major design consideration. Some, like engines and boilers, have to be placed low due to their size and weight so that the ship will maintain a proper center of gravity and stability. In this case where the generators were added late in the ship's career, the major consideration was likely what compartments could be used that didn't require major alterations or moving other equipment that would take a lot of time and money. Also included was the need for locations where cable could be routed, along with exhaust ducts, etc. Lastly, the selected locations were good precisely because they had good protection from flooding. Even though they were close to the bottom, they were not only watertight themselves, they were surrounded by layers formed by other watertight compartments and a double bottom below it.

we can't go to the moon anymore, I don't think we'll ever be able to achieve anything like this ever again, just computer chips everywhere, and god forbid we have a microchip shortage.

@@OfficialUSKRprogram That is not true at all. We can go to the Moon any time we want to. The problem is that "we" (the government and those who decides what it does) doesn't feel the need or want to.

I am glad that you can at least visit it virtually. Be sure to see more about the ship on the Battleship Texas Foundation channel.

Glad you like them!

I agree that it probably would. Unfortunately, with no good means in place to provide cooling water or remove exhaust, all we can do is occasionally visit and admire it!

@@tomscotttheolderone364 Where did the exhaust normally go?? Is it just a matter of the exhaust plumbing being gone or sealed off??? Seeing that engine, Id love to dive in and resto/rehab it and hear it fire again!!

@@wheels-n-tires1846 See the replies to Mark Wales posted 2 days ago. Much of the lines are still there, but the opening through the outer hull was sealed decades ago. Likewise, while the seacock, used to provide cooling water, is still mounted on the deck, the through hull opening for it was plated over 30 years ago. I agree that it would be really cool to start and run it, but I don't see that happening for a number of reasons.

You’re not wrong, but the truth is that if things have gotten that bad- you’ve got bigger problems.

The oil tanker I was on was built in the early 1960s, but it had a (short) time delay and an alarm horn to warn you to get out of the compartment before the CO2 bottles dumped.

Fortunately, there is a trunk (vertical shaft) that travels from the main deck down to this level just outside of the room. The generator was lowered in pieces down the trunk and into the room where it was reassembled. There were both intake and exhaust lines, now removed, that came in from outside the ship, through compartments above it to the generator.

You're right, since deck hatches were only a couple of feet square, it was necessary to disassemble, lower, then reassemble the generator to get it into the space. Fortunately, they were able to lower the parts straight down a trunk from the main deck that is just a few feet from the compartment, so it only required carrying them a few feet to get them into the compartment.

Yes, the aft generator was damaged beyond any hope for repair due to flooding over an extended period of time. While a marine contractor didn't try to repair the equipment, they did clean and spray it with an encapsulate when they repaired the ship's hull framing and inner hull plating in that compartment.

My best answer for it is that asbestos was a good insulator even though it didn't have to protect against high temperatures on these pipes. I can see where insulating against potentially very cold seawater drawn into the pipes and pumps wasn't so much a temperature issue as it was a moisture issue. Very cold pipes will condense moisture out of the air, just like an iced tea glass, that may gather on equipment, and compartment surfaces. As far as using asbestos, why not? It was inexpensive, plentiful and its danger wasn't recognized at the time. Anyway, those are my speculations.

5/43

Those plates on the side like the one he took off look like Detroit Diesel.

I am safe because I closely follow established safety protocols and have proven my ability to negotiate passages, trunks and spaces. By the way, that isn't a small thing. It requires close and constant attention to small things that must become second nature. Close to the top of the list is training oneself to carefully check that hatches at the top of ladders are properly secured before climbing past them. Grabbing a hatch to pull yourself up is a natural and unconscious thing to do that can lead to serious injury if it hasn't been secured and slams closed on one or both hands. You not only crush your hand, you then fall to the bottom of the ladder onto whatever bad surface is at the bottom. Having said that, I still bang my head on things because I am looking down at where I am walking. While I am not a decision maker on these matters, I suspect that restoration of lighting in rarely visited spaces is probably very low on the list of priorities.

Sorry, but I do not have access to the top of the main mast, so I won't be creating any videos there. There is a possibility that Battleship Texas Foundation may do it on their channel sometime in the future, so keep an eye on them.

Navy porn! :)

Regular utility power is brought on board and distributed on board using modern distribution panels strategically located around the ship. Some historic wiring is used once it has been tested for safe use and modern wiring has been pulled where using historic is inappropriate.

I have never seen a rationalization for their choice of system voltage of 120 volts direct current, but I don't think that saving copper was an issue for them. My guess is that the lower voltage, at the cost of larger conductors, manual switches and electrical contactors, was chosen due to it being easier to achieve and control. What I find more interesting was their choice of direct current rather than alternating current. They were certainly capable of producing and controlling ac, plus ac became the norm in later ships. I will say one thing about dc over ac. In spite of its lower efficiency and system losses, it is much easier to control. With dc, you can reverse motors simply by reversing polarity, and very smoothly control motor speed using variable or stepped resistors in the circuit. This isn't possible with ac. You can also add any number of generators to a circuit simply by matching their output voltages. AC requires constant monitoring and matching sine waves. There is one room in a compartment called Interior Communications that contains two large AC motor/generator sets that produced 120 volts ac and were paralleled together. Beside them is a large control board that appeared to need manual supervision and control to keep them matched.

Kevin, thanks for your detailed comments. I always appreciate hearing from someone who has hands-on experience with these types of systems. I agree 100% with everything that you say. I also completely agree that the great value of the EDG's was to provide power to critical loads during an engineering casualty that didn't necessarily include f.o. pumps. I went back and watched the video and was unpleasantly surprised to see and hear what you took away from it which was that I overemphasized powering the electric fuel oil pumps. While I can see a need for that, it would be extremely rare since it pretty much assumes that they would be faced with six boilers that if not cold, were at least not hot enough to produce usable steam. It was not my intention to emphasize the pumps, even when I was shooting the video. That is one of the dangers of working unscripted. Reviewing the circuits to better determine EDG functions; there were three 30 amp circuits serving two ventilation circuits and a lube oil alarm for the EDG itself. Three 60 amp circuits were for f.o. pumps. There were two 100 amp circuits for auxiliary lighting and a fourth f.o. pump . There was also a 400 amp circuit that fed the electric fire pump located in the compartment next door. I find the most interesting ones to be two, 200 amp circuits. One was for forward radar and another fed the i.c. and f.c switchboard. That was the interior communications and fire control switchboard that distributed power to the circuits for all of the targeting and director equipment used to aim and fire the 14" guns. Due to the way the steam system was split according to the ship's WWII engineering casualty control book, it was also possible that the ship's electrical system was also split into forward and aft halves during combat, with each separately fed by the fore and aft dynamo rooms. If that was the case, I could see that providing emergency power to the 14" batteries would be a top priority if there was a major casualty in the forward dynamo room. What is frustrating about all of this was that the two EDG's were installed in 1942, the early days of WWII. By then, the ship carried its first generation of radar, and the 14" fire control systems and the majority of the ship's systems were in their final form. That meant that they knew exactly what their priorities were for emergency power and it is interesting that so much was allowed for the f.o. pumps. Unfortunately, I'm not aware of any documentation that describes that and any veteran that may have known is most certainly deceased. Anyway, thanks again for your input. It was very good!

@@tomscotttheolderone364 I was on a Replenishment Oiler. We had 1 boiler room with 3 boilers, and 1 engine room with 4 SSTGs and appropriate Propulsion Turbines/reduction gears for two shafts. Main Steam could be cross-connected or isolated pretty much however it needed to be. Memory dims a bit after almost 35 years, but we had two or three electric fire pumps and 1 steam turbine F/P. For lighting off from Cold Iron we had pretty much one of everything required to fire a boiler that was electrical. That load was within the capabilities of either Shore Power or the EDG. We had two main electrical switchboards, with 1/2 of critical loads fed from each switchboard. They were generally configured with at least 1 SSTG feeding each board, but with the boards tied together. 1 board fed the "Normal" bus, and 1 the "ALT bus, with the EDG feeding the "Emergency" bus. Important spaces/equipment would have an ABT (Auto Bus Transfer Switch) for Normal/Alt, while critical spaces has a Normal/Alt/Emergency ABT. The bus ties between the EDG and the main switchboards were generally left open, so if we lost the SSTGs the EDG would auto-start and feed the Emergency Bus. The main boards would be isolated and "stripped" (everything except vital circuits to "open") then the emergency bus ties would be closed after the EDG was manned up and comms established so as to be able to control the load on the EDG. I believe that I have the details correct, but it HAS been many years. I can assure you that the ship was a dark, hot, stuffy place to be until we got steam back up...unless you were fortunate enough to be in one of the spaces which were deemed to be critical enough to warrant a connection to the Emergency bus...Like the IC/Gyro shop. We ALWAYS had power if it was available. The main IC Switchboard fed not only the gyros, but also the fire/flooding alarms, the fireroom/engine room alarms (Temp, lo lube pressure, etc.), the 1MC, dial telephone, etc. plus a lot of other systems either directly or via feeds to local switchboards. As an aside, the Master Gyro not only fed heading data to the gyro repeaters, but also Heading/pitch/roll data to the weapons platforms for stabilization. They had their own gyro systems as well, but the signal from the Master Gyro was generally much more accurate. Both the Master and Aux gyros had battery backup as well...took up to 24 hours to get them back up and stable/accurate if they went offline. The heading/pitch/roll signals from the gyros were distributed from the main IC switchboard, as were the wind speed/direction and the ship's speed from the Underwater Log (Pitsword). This allowed isolation of a specific repeater or group of repeaters in case of damage.

@@kevincrosby1760 Interesting, especially with the gyros. Texas had two master gyros that provided own ship's heading info to the main battery range keepers. Pitch and roll (level and cross level) was separately provided by the stable element. However, that very possibly changed on later battleships that used newer range keepers that also controlled turret train and elevation through servos, which is an ability that Texas never had. I.C. on Texas has a board dedicated to feeding main battery plotting room and associated equipment. 1MC and other circuits that you mention were also powered from there, but appear to be fed separately from the plot board, so I don't know if the EDT's fed them. There is a large sound powered phone board that is integral to the board in main battery plot that controls the directors and turret information, but by definition, it didn't require power. Things could have been worse for you on a ship with cold boilers. Texas didn't gain the ability to operate electric f.o. pumps until the EDT's were installed in 1942. Prior to that, they initially fired the boilers using hand pumps to feed them with diesel. I assume that required at least a couple of hours of heavy manual labor to get steam to start the steam fed booster pumps, service pumps and f.o. heaters.

@@tomscotttheolderone364 Most bases provided steam as part of pier services which in theory could be used to at least get things warmed up and run some low-pressure auxiliary equipment. In reality, pier steam was something that we isolated to "hotel services" such as space heating, galley, etc., and condensate was routed to the bilges. Big difference between "OK with Engineering" and "OK to heat buildings". Base facilities tended more towards "Feed water is what you have after you let the rust settle out of the condensate". Trying to fire a boiler with the requirement that you had to keep the fuel pressure and boiler water level up using hand pumps does not sound like fun. As you no doubt figured out I was an IC. I made it a point to have at least a basic understanding of how the plant worked and how my equipment interfaced with or affected a given piece of equipment. If nothing else, it made the arguments shorter when discussing if it was my sensor or their equipment which was malfunctioning. One of my systems was the Salinity Indicating System, which determined whether Condensate went to the DFT or to the bilges. Of course we NEVER had contaminated condensate, it was ALWAYS the sensors...until the Oil King finished analyzing the sample... Most of what I worked with WAS servos. Everything from the gyro repeaters to the ones which opened the spool valves on the rudder hydraulics when you moved the helm wheel. If not servos, I was working on alarms or Valve-position indicators. Ever stopped to think how many remote-actuated valves an Oiler might have? However, I'm almost convinced that Deck Dept. conducted special training on how to properly mangle a sound-powered headset.

1) Since it had to be installed after any manufacturing date shown on labels, it would have to be sometime after May 1943. 2) I don't know for sure since I have never tried to trace it. Looking through some plans and photos of compartments above it, the exhaust may go up to the next level across a compartment, then up again into a diesel pump room. I thought it may combine with the exhaust from that engine, where the combined lines go into the anchor windlass room next door. From there, it may run with the anchor engine's steam supply and exhaust lines. You can see that room and engine in my video, "Weighing Anchor on Battleship Texas". I thought that maybe the exhaust line may run alongside the steam lines, but when I looked at the compartment above, I only saw steam lines, so that's where I lost track.

The exhaust runs upwards, crosses the ship, goes up into the port side of the wardroom and exhausts through the side of the ship. The exhaust’s water trap (which was in the wardroom) became a massive beehive and we had to remove the water trap and blank the exhaust to keep the bees from coming back.

Sorry it took this long to reply. That is a good question that requires a complicated answer. First, there was no auxiliary power for the turrets. The limited amount of emergency power would be desperately needed for critical loads needed for pumps and limited lighting. However, you didn't simply loose steam power unless the ship took so much damage that she would probably be incapable of fighting and most efforts would concentrate on saving her. When preparing for battle, the steam system was set up so that there were two separate mains, one running down each side of the ship. The port side boilers in each of the three boiler rooms fed the port engine and aft generators and the starboard boilers did the same for the starboard engine and forward generators. This meant that a main steam rupture would only affect 1/2 of the engines and power generation. Once the damage was isolated or repaired, they could cut the undamaged sections back into the system. If a hit completely disabled a boiler room, affecting both steam mains, it could be cut out of both systems using valves located outside of the room, thus restoring pressure to both mains at a reduced rate. If this happened, they could also supplement any reduced electrical power with the emergency generators. This would allow power for most, if not all, of the turrets. They actually had written procedures that were studied and rehearsed for all conceivable problems like this, so while it was possible that you could lose all power to the turrets, it was exceptionally unlikely.

While I have never seen any documentation that addresses this issue, at least partial disassembly then reassembly is the only option that makes sense. It would be extremely difficult and impractical to enlarged deck hatches and cut open decks to accomplish the task.

@@tomscotttheolderone364 If it was done in the 1924 renovation they may well have cut holes through the hull of the ship and hard-patched them before building out the torpedo protection tanks which were added at that time. The 1943 dated nameplate could have been a replacement part or upgraded component which was installed during a maintenance availability.

@@ericbowen650 We do know that emergency generators were installed late in the ship's career, even though we do not have an exact date. We know this because none of the plans indicate a space for them, including the 1937 Booklet of Plans that show the forward compartment to be a provisions store room and the aft the Marines store room. Also, there are other legend plates on major components that generally agree with the 1943 date.

That is correct.

I've seen many of their videos.

@@tomscotttheolderone364They posted a vid yesterday or a few days ago about the CIS and restoration there. I wish you and Ryan would get together. The 2 of you would make an amazing pair for battleship info.

Those are actually pretty resistant to flooding. They are in an area well protected from shells and bombs, and are away from the sides and close to the center line of the ship. The hold deck that they are on is also extremely compartmented, so the possibility of flooding is very low.

I believe the general idea was to put safety equipment as far as possible from direct shell damage, which meant putting it low. That of course opened the possibility of flooding, but it was also placed close to the centerline of the ship, so was hopefully unlikely to be in a ruptured compartment in case of torpedo. I'm pretty sure all the hatches in this area would have been dogged down before going into combat, so flooding a nearby compartment should not have automatically flooded the generator room. Which was another reason for operating it remotely -- you may not have been able to get to it after damage.

I don't think the generator compartments are anymore subject to flooding than any other compartments that are below the waterline. The ships were designed to accept the fact that there would be flooding due to damage which is why the hull below the waterline was highly compartmented. In fact, if you look closely at the video, the passage that I initially entered with the valves is divided by a watertight door. Both of the rooms that I entered have watertight doors and there are compartments on the outboard ends of the passage with watertight doors. All of those would be closed during combat so that flooding would be restricted to very small areas as long as a bulkhead or door wasn't ruptured. It is even possible for compartments above them to flood without them flooding. While the blowers provide forced draft for good steam generation and burning efficiency, you can shut them off and still operate on natural draft, but at much lower steam output. Besides, they are all steam driven by the boilers in the room that they serve.

@@lwilton All of that is true. The main reason for remote start is that those compartments wouldn't be occupied and would be battened down anytime the ship was in action. So, it was the only way the engines could be started.

Well, remember that there are both forward and aft emergency generators. And they are >>emergency

@@ericbowen650 The electric service pumps were obviously considered a critical load, but saying that the generators' primary function was to "jump-start" boilers requires a leap of speculation that I am not willing to make.

This is a distribution switchboard, meaning that loads were never controlled from there. It was only used to provide overload protection to each circuit using fuses and the switches served as power disconnects, not as means of control. For that reason, they remained closed and were only opened to remove power from a circuit that had problem. No one needed to be down except if a fault needed to be cleared. There could be a problem starting the generator if there were large loads hooked to it. However, there were two ways the starting load could be reduced. They could telephone the control locations for the major loads and tell them to turn the loads off off, start the generator, then turn the loads back on. The other was to start the generators and already have them on line as part of the damage control procedure prior to going into action. While I don't know if that was a standard procedure for them, it is in line with other strategies that I know were used prior to going into battle. The nice thing is since they generated d.c. current, they didn't require complicated synchronizing and simply supplemented the main generators.

The plan is for the ship to go to dry dock sometime around May or June this year. The major work will be replacement the outer hull shell plating below the waterline.

@@tomscotttheolderone364 I've forgotten; is she still free-floating, or is she sitting on a mud bank? If she's on a mud bank I can see it might be expensive to get her floating enough to get to a drydock.

@@lwilton She floats.

In pieces.

I was thinking that it could be an F-M 38E5-1/4. They did make a 3 cylinder unit, and the blower on the end of the engine makes me think F-M versus GM.

It is a General Motors Cleveland 3-268 diesel engine.

The ship's four 400kw dynamos and the emergency diesel generators provided 120vdc for ship's power. This wasn't uncommon when Texas was built and there were some good reasons for doing it, even though it was pretty inefficient. One big reason is that d.c. allowed much simpler variable speed and reversing motor controllers. However, there were many systems on board that required ac and/or different voltages, especially with the growth of electronics on board during WWII. In order to feed them, they used motor-generator sets that ran on 120vdc and put out whatever voltage was required. This allowed them to set mg sets close to their intended loads and wire them into the ship's system.

Remember too, the Texas was originally built in 1912 - so the electrical system was not what we typically find in ships built even 20 years later.

In pieces, moved down through hatches from the main deck, then on trolleys and rails on the 3rd deck to the hatches where they can be lowered to the area I first entered.

@@tomscotttheolderone364 must of been a very big undertaking, be cool to fire it up again

I am not aware of any documentation that tells us that they did that, but it's easy for me to believe that they may have occasionally used them during WWII. One great advantages of the ship's somewhat archaic 120 volt dc system is that it was very easy to tie the two emergency generators into it to provide extra capacity if they had everything turned on and were running short of power.

You are probably right, but these could also be used to supplement the regular systems if they need extra capacity.