Glory Hole: Berthing, Storage, Armor, and Office Spaces 

“This is an original desk that’s obviously been through some shit.” Had to laugh 🤣

I'd love to see a video that covers: "The top 10 things that the museum wishes the Navy had left on board."

I just love these videos of: "I've got a battleship with lots of compartments, lets go walk/crawl through some of the spaces I have never been to before and see what we find"

I served aboard her from 83 to 86 I was in A divison EN 3rd class TODD GLICK . when you showed that part with the pull down ironing board my rack was directly in front of that on the bottom. Brought back a lot of memories. THANK YOU

Navy planning: Heavy stuff goes down as many ladders as possible, store items in the bow for divisions located aft, keep your engineering staff separate from everyone else, label cabinets as "cabinet".

These videos are like eating chips, can’t eat just one, can’t watch just one. Better every time

Just watched video on glory home, aka A division berthing I saw my rack right behind the ladder middle bunk thanks Ryan it brought back memories Calvin Fletcher En2

Your 3M Coordinator would have been in charge of the ship's Maintenance Material Management System (3M). He would act as the liaison between ship's force and outside repair entities (shipyard, NAVSEA, NAVELEX, SPAWAR, etc.). He's the guy who "gets stuff done." Hence, the non-standard desks, shelves and horse-traded shipyard furniture and equipment. The microfiche reader in that space makes perfect sense, as ships drawings and OPNAV 4790-series documents and publications were on film through the mid-1990s. Since 3M is relatively new to Battleship New Jersey, it makes sense that they converted THAT space into an office. While I have not seen a shipboard rotary J-dial phone, yes, I can operate (and have) one just fine.

Just a point of clarity. “SNIPES” was a name given after a person, not the animal. It was the engineering officer who lead a revolt against the deck departments, because of how the engineers were treated as second class sailors. They refused to operate the ship until the engineers were treated fairly. Since it was Jonny Snipes who started the revolt, engineers have become to be known as initially “Snipes Men” then finally “Snipes”. Originally it was a derogatory term, we find it as an endearing term. As I recall, the 3M space you were in was our maintenance office. They kept records and ensured our program was current for engineering department.

The safes in the Tech Library would of course to used to safeguard any manuals that were classified as "Confidential" or higher. Those manuals could be for Crypto gear and the such. The Radio room would also have safes for Key Codes and the equipment that codes things like secure radios and IFF.

5000 tons of rivets? Wow, that's the weight of two Fletcher class destroyers that could have been saved if she were all welded.

11:52 I just noticed the two Commodore 64 external floppy drives on the shelf to the right. Dad was Navy up until '85, and damn straight they had C=64s on board.

My mom use to call an long distance access line to call Australia with a phone card on a rotary phone. 60+ digits and you can't get one wrong!!!

The reason that the office is on a level below the storeroom is actually quite simple. It also used to be a storeroom. When the ship got rid of the landing force, it became vacant. And then when the Navy was looking for where they could put something new, that was the space that was available.

I can't wait for Drac to come and visit!

I love when Ryan randomly gets excited finding something during a video. Sometimes I wonder whats the big deal... sometimes i get excited too!

Engineering tech libraries in the early 80's had money to purchase manuals, but other supplies we had to scrounge. The primary source would be salvage yards or comshaw.

"But clearly it has gone somewhere". I'll bet a lot of stuff suffered that fate.

How ironic. I get to see my berthing space since I was an A Gang.

"... and a cabinet, labeled... Cabinet." that got me good:D

Its these videos that really help show just how you might squeeze nearly 2k people and supplies on to the ship and what their day to day life might have been like.

Snipes are wading birds. As far as I know there are no extant burrowing birds. That said, my dad served on the Wisconsin in Korea. We were able to take him to see the ship shortly after she was first put i reserve and available for visiting in Norfolk. It meant a lot to him even though we were very limited as to which areas we could see. It was the last two we were able to take him on and he passed away in 2009. I just wanted to say how much I enjoy and appreciate these videos. These truly are magnificent ships.

I remember rotary phones as well as party lines.

This reminds me of a visit to the Queen Mary back in the 80's. We were on a tour and as the guide was leading our group my friend and I hung back at a point and just let them go on. Apparently nobody noticed and we crawled all over the engine room on our own. We spent a good hour climbing up and down the lower levels and actually got down to where the driveshafts go through the hull. The steering mechanism where the two pistons attach to the tiller was very cool. I doubt we would get away with something like that today.

Yes, I grew up with rotary phones. There is a lot of similar equipment aboard New Jersey that my DD used because it was the mid-80’s. I bet the ship gets spooky when you are moving through it by yourself. When you were in the berthing compartments, I imagined the crowding and movement of guys in it like my ship. I haven’t looked yet, but there should be a ghost video on New Jersey for Halloween made if one hasn’t been done. Great video....BTW, the 2nd class “crows” on the ironing board were ironed on with appliqué style crows. I bet the guy doing it placed it the wrong side up somehow when ironing?

The watertight door being used without a gasket: it is much sturdier than simple doors and thus would be harder to break into. A burglartight door if you will.

Must be so interesting and fun to be able to explore a ship like this and go anywhere you want

The ironing board shows the remnants of sailors ironing on the "crow" on the left sleeve of the dungaree uniform. Although some sailors 'inked' a crow on their shirts, such uniforms were generally used to stand watch or working in the engineering main spaces, hence known as "steaming dungs". Also, many a dungaree shirts crow had "void" or another unauthorized display of rank or former rank. Some dungarees had "tailor-made" embroidered crows on chambray blue cotton...some with and most without rating emblem below the crow.

i can just imagine a senior crew member showing some new guy around and the very pointed look that would be required when mentioning the name of a certain area

@11:51 I see some commodore 64 drives. Lots of old tech guys would love those.

The "one ironing board" problem is one I'm familiar with, in a previous life I was a Boy Scout and our leaders were a lotta ex-military people. One of the cheats I learned was, if you aren't hot bunking, just leave your uniform flat under your mattress so it stays pressed perfect all the time instead of actually bothering to iron things - do it the lazy way. In scouting we didn't even HAVE irons but at summer camps and organized events we'd get yelled at for having wrinkled uniforms, so that was an easy way.

You could do this in about 25 more places ! The extra details really make it interesting !

One thing I'd like to mention is that at least nowadays we all have mesh laundry bags into which we put our clothes and secure the top with a very large safety pin which is threaded around the top mesh of the laundry bag to close it, and has a patch of cloth sewn onto the side of the bag on which we write our name, unit, and last four digits of our SSN with permanent marker or stencils. The whole bag gets thrown in like this into the ship's laundry machines, which are large industrial units, and the clothes are laundered with various degrees of success depending on how much stuff and how tightly they're packed into the laundry bag. You also have to make sure you secure the top properly or you will lose any items which might escape during the washing process. We usually have personnel from each unit or berthing space who pick up the bags after washing and deliver them back to the berthing spaces (hopefully). You then take your clothing out of the bag and stash it and start filling it with soiled items again. As a Marine aboard carriers and gators we usually hung our laundry bags as they filled up from the edge rails of our racks, we didn't always have the luxury of laundry bins to contain the smell. If we were pretty funky from working on the flight deck or returning from amphibious operations ashore, you just had to get used to living in smelly berthing spaces. Oh, and as for it being "too loud" for sleeping sailors, believe me, the Navy don't care about such trivia. You adapt and overcome. Even on carriers there are berthing spaces directly below the LA as well as the cats, you haven't lived until you've learned to sleep through the "WHAAM!" of aircraft crash-landing (OK, trapping normally) or the "WHOOSH-BANG!" of birds launching directly overhead. I think I lost more of my hearing from sleeping there than from working on the flight deck or firing heavy weapons, not to mention the violent impact and vibration you feel during flight operations. That office space is most likely a converted berthing space. And there are many things which are stored in safes, from classified technical publications to radio codes to sensitive components and hazardous materials. Control, control, control. Procedure, procedure, procedure. Yes, I know how to use a rotary dial phone, I grew up in a time before cell phones and even personal computers, and before the invention of fax machines. We took pictures with 35 mm film and had 24 or 36 exposures, unless you had a cool Hasselblad or a micro "spy" camera, we had pay phones in the street and in bars and diners, all phones had cords, a color TV was a luxury and it was built into a fancy piece of furniture and you had to get off your butt to change the channel by turning one of two dials (use some pliers if it was broken), and someone had to go up on the roof to move the TV antenna around to get the best reception possible, and you had to mess with vertical hold and put up with off-air test patterns, etc. Cars mostly had manual transmissions and a roll of tools in the trunk, you had a crank handle to roll down the window, speed limit was 55 MPH and you dressed up to fly in an airplane and we called "flight attendants" stewardesses and we could fix a broken car antenna with a coat hanger and looked up phone numbers in a phone book and if you needed to learn about something you went to a library and roller skates had metal wheels and leather straps and many more fun things.😎😁

Awesome. A hundred years from now these videos will be part of the history of the ship.

I am well versed in the use of a rotary phone. I was a teenager before we got a push button phone. Back in those days the phone company owned the telephone.

This is amazing. I had the good fortune to get 2 tours of the ship and loved it back in 2004-5. Vast sections of the ship were cordoned off due to the hazards of steep stairs ect. I was always curious about all aspects of the ship and the history behind it. Thankyou for the videos, they are appreciated.

I know the names of places and equipment on ships come from long and sometimes strange maritime traditions, but calling the place a “glory hole” has to be the best one ever. God, I love a sailor’s sense of humor.

Everybody always talks guns I love to see the day to day grind of the real navy and love your explanations and saying what's original and later add on parts. Are any compartment's untouched since ww2 or are all modernized? I used to hate on a rotary phone if you messed up a number then you had to start over and it took forever.

One of the most fascinating episodes, how litterally everything they felt could be used elsewhere was raided when she was decommissioned, so there is a mismatched Mashup of desks and such as well as creative engineering.

I always notice that Marines are berthed as low as possible. Makes me wonder if the Navy officers would just berth them in the oil tanks if they could get away with it

6:38 Love those commodore 64 disk drives on the berth behind him lol!

The museum is really branching out! lol

This isn’t the gloryhole i was expecting

Commented about this before, where I do love the videos with the old vets, I do honestly like seeing the random strange stuff :) I know for a fact that I could spend the rest of my life exploring around, and find something new that I never realized was there.

RE. rotary phones: I used to live in India from 1973 until 1982. There, using the rotary phone was a real art form, as you needed to rotate it slowly at just the right speed and also hold for a fraction of a sec to even have a chance to get through to the correct number...

Really interesting video. I like seeing all the strange stuff from modifications over the ships service life. I would love to see a video covering some of the strangest modifications (Official or carried out by sailors in an "unofficial" manner) and things that leave you wondering "why would somebody do that?"

I loved this video! I would love to see more videos like this! I think it’s fascinating to see just the random spaces and all the cool stuff that was left behind.

I somehow feel like this was a missed opportunity to simply say, "This is where we keep the shoe," and move on with no further explanation.

Engineering berthing on USS Saipan (LHA-2) had a storage room attached with an office/classroom space for working on our CLEP courses. Also, during the mid-90s we were so short handed that I had three racks and three lockers all to myself (not that I had any time to sleep). And you're right about engineering departments having some of the most "customized" berthing and recreational spaces. It's within our skill set and in our very nature to be creative and resourceful little pit snipes.

I used the rotary phone when I were a child, here in Denmark the former emergency number were 0-0-0, today changed to 1-1-2. But you can imagine it would take a longer time, to turn not dial the emergency number. We found one rotary phone at work, we painted it red like the ones which you normally see in the presidential office, which in movies connects directly to a Kremlin office phone.

Reminds me of George Carlin’s skit about a place for your stuff lol. I love these tours of areas that are off the beaten path! Thanks

Thanks for taking us exploring, Ryan. Very interesting stuff!

Great video Ryan. Getting to see you explore and comment on parts of the ship is really interesting. You provide lots of knowledge while you look around.

I bet that 1st Lt.’s storeroom was used as a seabag locker. A space where sailors would store belongings that didn’t fit in their personal lockers.

Interesting stuff! been watching for awhile. never been in any service. glad to watch someone who cares about these ships. Thanks!

This has to be one of my favorite most interesting videos on this channel, yet there are alot I have to watch yet. very Informative.

Great video, loved it when Ryan spotted things and let out an "ooo". Like a kid in a toy store :)

Thanks for a really great video. It was an interesting tour of different compartments that aren't normally seen by the public.

3M is Maintence Material Management. It is a system for maintaining the ship. It covers ordering parts, maintenance schedules, tracking materials, etc. “tech edit” is part of that process. That “weird” office is likely where they processed parts orders for preventative and corrective maintenance.

this video is worth it just for the origin of the term Snipes, starting at just after @07:00

My grandmother used a rotary phone for years, she still had one in use till at least 2000. I loved using them.

Thanks for all the content. I really appreciated you pointing out all the tiny features like the welds and markings. I would be doing the same thing.

I love these types of videos it’s a look into every day life in the navy.

These videos are fantastic, I came to see the New Jersey in 2012 when I was across seeing friends in NY. Unfortunately I could not do the tour as I came mid week. I have a great time though going round exploring by myself and spent quite a while talking to the people you have onboard. Hopefully I can come back one day and do the tour.

Of all the things you might find on an old battleship I expectet two(2!) 1541 Comodore floppy disc drives with the original closing mechanism (not the lever) the very least (7:17, behind you on the bed). If they are still in working condition you should try to sell them. They might be worth at least a little donation for the upkeeping of the ship.

I can only guess that every ship's crew has 1 or more expert "scroungers". I say this because of a comment made at approx. 25:09 in reference to shelves snagged at a shipyard instead of being purchased through proper channels. I was Army and we certainly had expert scroungers in most units.

I'm going to assume that a naval term that has now been repurposed...

Many years ago my crew and I had to redesign and make operational the sound powered comm. System on the old sub tender proteus. Including executive over rides . Pulling new armored cables which love to cut you . Once one of my guys left a bridge one up. And started cussing to me over it . That went over just great. I would leave smokes in critical boxes to see if my crew were doing their job. This was all due to the ship being cut into half to add a missile and rad compartments . The rad space was very restricted access but we had access . Even the master at arms were not allowed . Rad badges showed less rad than being outside . One large box? That made weird sounds in that space . Thx a ton for your efforts.

No matter the storage space, no matter the ship the guy who gave you stuff out of those storage spaces always acted like it was coming out of his own paycheck. Great video.

Great video. I like when you find or see something that makes no sense or you see something that is out of place.. If my great uncle was still alive he might have been able to explain some things about the ship. Keep up your great work

Ryan: Informative tour as usual. Thanks! Your knowledge is deep as well as wide... as if you had served on board. The B&W photo you showed while talking about Machine ratings being in a Glory Hole berthing area actually showed third-class midshipmen, so not rated enlisted men. "3M" was a manual (paper) training and qualifications system introduced in the early 70s. So that one space was dedicated to those who maintained the records and manuals. I'm sure that unwieldy system was replaced by 1980. I suspect the "non-reg" shelving and desks were obtained from a salvage depot at a base or shipyard. The stuff was free to the receiving ship and quicker to get than ordering through the supply system. As PAO on a destroyer I got some great camera gear that way that our Captain would never have paid for (e.g. Nikon camera & lenses and a Speed Graphic 4x5. I noticed some sounding tubes behind you in the last shot. Have you explained how that's done & why? It might interest some people. Yup, I've used rotary phones. Not aboard my first ship, an updated WWII destroyer. But aboard the USS Blue Ridge in 1973, yes. And at home, I grew up with 'em. I had a 5-digit phone number: 9-0100.

I've actually gone to the "Base Supply Store" in Japan back in 84 - 86, this is where you would get typewriter ribbon, carbon copy paper, pens, pretty much whatever, including the phone "shoulder support." I distinctly remember opening the small box and installing it on my desk phone. My phone at the time was "push button," not "rotary." Yeah I used the quotes "too much."

i served aboard the uss. taluga ao62 in the tonkin gulf in the late "60s. We replenished the New Jersey many times with black oil and propelant for the 16 inch guns. It was always exciting to be along side the huge and graceful lines of the mighty battle ship.

Great work guys!

Growing up we only had rotary phones, one on each floor and OWNED by the phone company, you rented them.

The ironing board crow appears to be from an Iron-On Crow. These were standard in the 80s. Many a uniform was ruined from not properly ironing (melting) the crow into the material. Also, if not cleaned properly, the black residue would stick to other uniforms, and the ironing board itself. Embroidered crows were a welcome improvement.

DDG man here, 3M, that's the ships maintenance office. 3M is Maintenance and material management for those who don't know. In my time on a DDG our 3M usually had a chief who we called simply 3MC. Alot of stuff here looks familiar to the time I was on a DDG from 2000-2004. The Ironing board we had maybe 2 for a 100 man berthing. Usually a lot of us used available tables.

The 3-M Coordinator sign is for the Departmental 3-M (Material Maintenance Management) Coordinator. This would be the guy in charge of training and spotchecking the Divisional Damage Control / 3-M supervisors and their maintenance men in the writing of maintenance schedules and proper performance of maintenance to machinery, ventilation, valves, fittings, watertight closures, Damange Control and fire fighting equipment assigned to their respective Divisions. I served as the Damage Control / 3M Coordinator for Admin Department onboard USS Nimitz CVN-68 from 1984 to 1986. We had 12 Divisions with a total of 144 spaces we were responsible for maintaining including the Print Shop equipment.

Great entry to your video series!

Thank you-🙏you are a wealth of information. I absolutely love history of the battle ships. Will be glad to donate what the government doesn’t take. Thanks again ‼️‼️

Thank you for showing all of use the inside of this ship

given the age of the boat (my ship was commissioned in 1944 and i was on it in 1990 to 1993. i would say the supply spaces were shoe horned in to fit where they could because they were not designed for the ship in the 40's. the cabling is probably for NSN computers and we had to research a lot using micro fiche for a ship that was built 50 years ago. imagine the amount of information you would need to sift through to support that in 1990 without any real computers other than mainframes.

Very good. Really appreciate the lapel microphone. Keep up the good videos.

Excellent video. The audio is much improved recently.

It really puts it into perspective how big that ship really is. I like videos like this

All the standard duplex receptacles look strange to me. When our Air Group was aboard the USS Randolph ('67-'68) the electricians where very strict that every outlet was a salt water plug, even in the JO bunk rooms which were right under the catapults. They would come through and if they found any standard home power cable sticking out of a locker (stereo was inside) they would cut the cord. This forced the JO to get the stereo converted to salt water plugs. Fifty five years later I still have one on my desk here at home. Rotary phone. One of the funniest videos I have seen was where they took two teen boys (15-17) and had them try to make a phone call on a rotary phone. They were clueless.

Thank you. These are very interesting.

My grandparents had a rotary dial phone in their finished basement. I used it once or twice, in the 1990s and maybe 2000s. I had to think about it to get started though. Like, "How do I use this again? Oh yeah." I was probably able to jog my memory about how to use a rotary dial phone, because I believe as a child in the 1980s I had at least some exposure to toy phones with rotary dials. Maybe they weren't my own personal toys, but at various church nurseries, relative's houses, etc., I'm guessing I came across some old style toy phones.

Thank you for you and your teams hard work I very much enjoy the videos and the history! Odd question would you talk about the ship morrings you use to keep the New Jersey in place? Thanks 😊

3M Coordinators life was hell. trying and keeping that system running, feed back reports, departure from specifications, making sure that people had the right MRCs and the deck was up to date. Let alone making sure the "R" Checks were being done right!..... Alll of it done by hand for the most part! In the 90s we went to computers but still had to do some of the boards by hand from time to time.

I not only used a rotary phone, it was a party line phone.

I still know my first home telephone number when exchanges had a word instead of the two letter combinations: CH was “cherry.” Rotary phones were pretty high tech. Bakelite was indestructible, as opposed to the fragile “smart” phones today. Also worked in a motel that still had the plug in switchboard through which all external and internal calls were routed. Enabled the owner to control how the system was used, prevented guests from calling long distance, and enabled the operator to listen in to the conversation. Technology has changed. People haven’t.

I still cannot believe this ship is not in service. Blows my mind.

Thanks so much for the tour into places seldom seen...it’s like an adventure into a time capsule....someone turned out the lights and walked away... ...i have the same “red tile” shown at 15:30 in my bathroom. 9” squares. Could you some time layout what a sailor would store in his locker and rack storage space ie: uniform, whites, blues, work clothes, personal stuff. Maybe show the difference between ww2 items and later items allowed.

GREAT JOB

When I was a kid we used Rotary phones, they changed when I was a teenager,

He definitely learned a lot more about editing since making this video

Around 25:00... "3M" was part of the whole wraparound maintenance and spares program. Planned maintenance, maintaining manuals for currency and changes, etc. The engineering tech library had a safe because some engineering rates actually dealt with classified equipment or equipment which supported classified equipment, primarily the IC guys. The safe would have held the manuals for the various intrusion and other security alarm systems, prints and wiring diagrams for same, etc.

What's cooler than urban exploration? Warship exploration!

As always an excellent video. And yes i had a rotaryphone as a child. If possible make a video in/about the galley/foodstorage or have you done that already?