It would be interesting to have a group, like Scouts, at hand, to actually stand in the positions, sequentially, just to show how "full up" the room becomes. That, of course, becomes complicated video to shoot. But, would be illustrative.
For anyone interested in learning more, Periscope uploaded an old training film that does a great job demonstrating how some of these computers worked. The title is "U.S. NAVY BASIC MECHANISMS OF FIRE CONTROL COMPUTERS MECHANICAL COMPUTER INSTRUCTIONAL FILM 27794" (Part 1 of at least 2)
I served on the Iowa as a talker, at GQ, and other times. Usually talkers would be standing neat bulkheads staying out of the way, and close to the jacks so no one would trip. The hardest part of being a talker is keeping your cord from getting tripped over.
Hi Ryan and all New Jersey staff. I was fortunate to receive a " Firepower Tour " last November on Battleship Massachusetts with Dr. John Scholes and we spent four hours on board and still could not fully complete the tour. I plan to continue the tour later this year. Naval fire control is a complex series of procedures that must be executed in a precise manner in order to deliver the shells on target and the equipment that you all were demonstrating were and still are masterpieces of engineering.
Ryan and Co have definitely crossed paths with Dr Scholes. He is an absolute treasure trove of information! I've had the pleasure of being there when the New Jersey crew and separately Drachinifel visited USS Salem and of course Dr. Scholes was there.
The engineering and the machining that goes into these cultural icons is jaw-dropping if you think about it. I mean, we don't know how to do that anymore nor even have the capability and that blows my mind.
@@bretsk2500 We most likely crossed paths aboard Salem last November when Ryan was aboard. I met Dr. Scholes at that time and was most impressed with his fire control knowledge as well as his knowledge of Naval History. I can say that the " Firepower Tour " is worth every penny.
I would love this same explanation done for the engine rooms. On submarines I know it was common for cross-training on various systems. Did the Navy do that for surface vessels like the battleships?
There is a certain amount of DCPQS (damage control training) everyone has to go through. So everyone has to know how to find valves, how to operate them, what they do, etc. As well as everyone has to know how to operate the firemain as well as isolate it.
In engine room #1 there would be 6 sailors. 5 Machinist’s Mates. Machinist’s Mate of the Watch, throttle man, upper level watch, lower level watch, and a messenger. And there would also be an Electrician’s Mate at the switch board.
You might find a list describing what all the sound powered phone circuits are used for. Like the 1JV is the main manouvering circuit and the 1JA is the Captains Battle circuit. This what were used on the Coast Guard Cutters I served on. I'm sure the USS IOWA has a load of different circuits I NEVER heard off. Great video seeing complex equipment to aim the 16 inch guns. No wonder there are so many men/women on a BB.
I believe this was mentioned once before in another video by Ryan but for a video of the main fire control room of the USS Missouri during actual combat in Desert Storm, search for the RU-vid video titled "Battleship USS Missouri - Missile Inbound Brace for Shock". It shows at least 14 crew members in Missouri's equivalent space.
Continuing on with this is a great idea. Perhaps next you could revisit SPOT and SKY with this book. Also moving into the next room and going over the 5" directors.
First, they design the guns. They decide they want X-inch guns, which require Y-sized turrets, which require X-sized hull to put to sea, which requires A-horsepower of thrust, B number of anti-aircraft and secondary guns. Then you add extras like the amount of fire control, damage control, aircraft catapults, radar arrays, communications etc etc, all of the little things needed to keep the ship sailing, and the guns firing. They take the number of men to maintain and operate those, then add the facilities needed to support those men, which comes down to sleeping, eating, bathing, and morale. You add the number of men required to run those facilities to support the crew, and adjust for themselves. Finally, throw in a captain and officer corps sufficient to maintain command, order, and discipline of those men, and you have your crew.
Previous experience with other ships. They know how many men it takes to run a 5" turret. They know how many men it takes to run a battleship turret. It's also not a completely fixed number. The number of men on a battleship varied through the years. Just during ww2 they added more AA and changed how many men were on the ship.
Yes, please more like this. I'd also be interested in comparing the manning schedule for operations in an active war zone (not battle general quarters), compared to peaceful operations in friendly waters. For instance how many weapons were manned etc.. How much and how fast could the ship respond to sudden unexpected threats before general quarters was set?
It's a good way of explaining the operation of the compartment and the layout and equipment as a general overview . It may be that the stateboard was replaced by a modern screen late in service or it was a nice size and nicked by another ship . I liked this as a good way to get a wider view of the whole space and Ryan explained very well .
I can't speak to the specifics of the U.S. Navy's personnel dispersements, but in the U.S. Army, my unit was never fully manned until they knew a deployment was coming up. Then, in no time flat, the unit got new personnel to fill the vacancies and new equipment as well. This was in the 2001- 2005 time period, so it may not be perfectly applicable too. 🤷
Perhaps as a finale to the video (or other like it), have the required number of vol's in the presumed right positions, then pan around the room, with Ryan naming each position and the vol raising a hand.
it would be nice to have a complete set of those books so that you could find everyone from every department whose GQ station was in a particular space.
Curious what the Marines did during GQ. My short time on LHD USS Essex our GQ billet was our berthing area, stand by to draw weapons to repel boarders.
The company of Marines manned and operated one of the 5" gun mounts (which had a black Eagle Globe & Anchor silhouette painted on the face of the mount), in addition to providing hands for the security team, nuclear weapons rover, and CO's orderly.
Billeting and general quarters is very interesting, and it’s a shame that this simple knowledge is almost lost to time just by way of people not writing these things down before all the old timers pass on. I appreciate you taking the time and effort to find and research these things to bring to the masses! I would love to see more of these types of videos in the future! Thank you Ryan and Battleship New Jersey!
This was an absolutely fascinating video, I would love to have a whole series of videos talking about the billets in various compartments. One for CEC and engineering would be amazing especially.
Hope this gets followed with what the theoretical minimum crew needed to start the engines (assuming in service and not a museum ship) and move her out to open ocean (without caring about precise navigation, equipment durability, and long term human sleep schedules).
@@danquigg8311 Sounds about right. Our somewhat smaller boiler tool 12-18 hours, but our distribution piping was relatively simple. I imagine that after raising pressure in the boiler the valves would be opened slowly and carefully until the Engineer felt confident that they could fully open the vales without a pipe or fitting blowing out.
9:16 The graphic on the Mk 48 computer\potting table shows the two forward turrets, looking down the barrel of the guns & is labeled *"Appetite for Destruction"*
This concept is really good. I would be interested in the manning/tasks for deploying the anchors, controlling the rudder, and managing the propeller speed. Thanks to you and your team.
Very good presentation on aiming the guns. Now almost always by this time the primary and secondary guns were used for shore bombardment, it would be a real treasure to see the same documentation from WW2 where there was a possibility of targeting an enemy ship and what the staffing arrangement would be. I keep seeing an empty seat at the computer and no mention of who sat there. We may never know.
This was a great video Ryan. I like this concept. I guess this also highlighted one aspect. Does the plans or any plans show what circuit is where? I would imagine there is somewhere. As you said the headphones had x number of circuits in that room. ( I would also imagine those circuits as in every communication circuit appears in one place somewhere simply for patching purposes maybe signalling or communications room somewhere) Where or are those duplicated elsewhere within the Ship? I would imagine yes in the Secondary fire control room. With the age of the ship and how everyone is aging. With each passing year there is going to be less and less crew who served on the ship still alive. I wonder if as the curator of the New Jersey it would be worth reaching out to those still alive and asking them could you tell us or come and show us what these are or what they are called especially when comes to likes of communication points. Or even asking them is there anything missing in this room that you can remember being here. Take advantage of the knowledge base already out there while can before it is gone. Because sadly once it is gone, that information is also gone forever. I realise that would be a lot of work. But I am also thinking about how much information would be gained compared to the work involved and from what I can think what you would gain, would far outweigh the effort involved.... But, maybe I am wrong.
I noticed that every fuse was pulled from every switch in the plotting rooms on the WisKy. Never saw a tour guide on the ship. There were a few guys that hung out in a room but they didn’t give tours.
@@chrisb9960 We lead six tours a day. Three Command and Control Tours and three Life in the Engine Room Tours. The plotting rooms are temporarily closed for maintenance. They should be open again soon. If guys were hanging out in a room onboard the Battleship, they were either coming off a tour or waiting for the next tour to begin.
@@jimbronson780 Not exactly. I understand there has to be a profit to keep up the facility. $20 to enter self tour without anyone at all to ask basic ship questions to in any area of the vessel. That was a bit disappointing. Would have been nice to have a couple areas with people in them. $20 for the Command and Control Tour $20 for the Engine Room Tour $60 bucks each adds up when bringing folks along was a bit pricey.
@@chrisb9960 When I have positioned myself at a station to answer questions, I get very few. So, I roam and look for people who appear to be interested, but confused about the ship. Also, I ask them if there is something in particular they are looking for. We have small crews and it is a huge ship.
@@jimbronson780 Hi Jim I've seen and spoke with you I'm sure, living in Norfolk I try to visit you at least once a year. All of your Tours are well worth the extra charge and if you stand around looking lost the roamers show up.
Some navy grease pencils are more like mechanical pencils: you turn a know on the end and more of the grease (or whatever it is) comes out the pointy end.
a plexiglass status board seems like something which would be high on a shopping list of souvenirs while the ship was going into mothballs. That's definitely something you could walk out the ship with tucked under your arm and nobody is gonna ask where it's going.
@robertlian2009 This is how we generally manned in the 1980’s. TO booth: no talkers, no local range Keeper operator, no range Finder operators. Just one sight setter, no other positions except on occasion a check sight officer at a sight pointer position. The reason for sights on both sides of the turret is because of where your LOS is in relation to the LOF. The TO had the job to designate which sights were to be used. 0:02 😊 Gun rooms as you said. Electric deck as you said. We generally did not have an electrician assigned, although we often needed one. (It was an ongoing battle with engineering dept.) Shell decks: We only manned one deck at a time. from a practical standpoint I don’t see how you could ever man them both at the same time. The upper deck hoists have a door that is lowered into the floor so the shells can be smoothly parbuckled into the hoist. If you were to move shells into a hoist at both levels at the same time I don’t believe you could then move that door out of the way so the shell from the lower deck could move up the hoist. Powder deck as you said.
Another excellent video, Ryan. Many thanks to you and your team. I'd love to see more of these types of explanations of how various departments or functions were organized. In addition to the turrets and fire control, some good topics would be the bridge watch, conning tower, damage control and boiler/engine rooms. I also think it is great that you and your staff keep finding these amazing artifacts.
I think this is very interesting. Especially in a space that may have morphed over the decades as technology changed. Other spaces: Bridge, Engine / Propulsion control, Medical, and how were support personnel (clerks, cooks & mess stewards, musicians, electricians, plumbers, machinists, etc.) occupied during combat. Thank you, Ryan.
Engine and boiler rooms would be very interesting to see. I had a Grandfather who served on the California pre war in the engineering spaces and fun to see how it worked.
Typical for the Navy was that the talkers were separate from the equipment/system they served and they stood behind a plexiglass statusboard and wrote backwards in grease pencil to update the status board. example. The front of CIC would have a set of status boards. The Electronic Warfare status board would have an EW talker behind it who was talking to the EW operator in another part of CIC. The EW talker would update the board based on information received from the operator. (Some things changed over time but that is the main idea)
The video was interesting & i would like to see more like it. One suggestion would be to give the actual dimensions of the space, either in curators or square feet.
I did enjoy this piece. Future videos would benefit from more pictures or video clips of the spaces in action if possible. That really brings it to life.
The deafening silence as you search for the answer in your infinite wisdom of knowledge continues to amaze me. I’ve heard it with my Pops and a few times with Sir Draq. Thank you all for your input on Naval History!
Those computers are one of the reasons I started watching navy videos and found this channel. But I've started wondering about what the maintenance onboard was like. How much space and what type of tooling was there? I just watched the "unloading" video and read in the comments how much "on the spot" engineering was required. Just putting my vote in for some type of video like this in the future. Keep up the great work!
It’s amazing how they could aim those guns and fire them so accurately with a mechanical computer that was so effective they never needed to replace it with digital ones
Every time you say you're recovering or reconstructing knowledge, I hope one of the former crew members will visit and be glad to tell you how they did things back in the day.
If the turrets were used by the army, they'd still send it to the small arms repair guy to fix because the guns are still striker fired and therefore a firearms, and when the gunsmith breaks his back from having to handle the guns, the VA will say their injury was not service related
Yes! I love videos like this, and the bridge, CIC and CEC are the spaces I most want to see covered. Also, how does a sound-powered phone work? Did you do a video on them that I missed?
Just going off of my experience with 5 inch guns the switch board operator was on the “guns” sound powered headset and he was a talker so he could verbally confirm changes. Often times we had 2 operators who worked together. also the “talkers didn’t have to be in the weapons division and were basically parrots.
Hi Ryan, your videos are super interesting. Fiddle with (operate) the various fire control computers would be the second coolest thing for a video. Obviously a full broadside with live ammo (even if training rounds) would be the first most cool thing ever 😅
A organization index. I remember when i asked for that in a alert center and i quietly got told to join the army or become a big politician before i would get to know that. So we made our own for the new NOC we where building for them and we never gave them that documentation before they showed us theirs. .. .. It was a fun project.
