How To Change The Oil On Your Battleship, Or Not 

My father passed 9/6/23 four days shy of his 99th birthday. He was an “oil king” on the USS New Jersey during WW2. His years of service were very important to him for the remainder of his life. Oh, the stories he could tell.

Please please do more videos with Walt, he is a wealth of knowledge and experience.

Retired MMCS Nuke both submarines and surface here. We shifted, cleaned, and inspected lube oil strainers on the midwatch every night. One additional item to check when shifting and inspecting lube oil strainers is the magnets on the central shaft of the duplex basket. Iron/steel from gears is magnetic and will be caught. Any excess ferrous material needs to be evaluated. The bearing material is babbit, a relatively soft material of lead/tin/antimony if memory serves and is non-magnetic. It will be captured by the basket material and in the bottom of the basket and resembles grey mud. If you find that on your inspection, Engineering is about to have a bad day.

Did this bring back memories. As a lower level man I disassembled and cleaned the De Laval oil purifier once daily.

Walt did a great job of explaining the lubrication system. Easily understood, and simply stated for those of us who are uninitiated in how the boiler room worked. Amazing stuff.

Please have him go do each system in the engine room, and boiler room from fuel, feed water, steam, etc.. as well as the evaporator room and other machinery paces! He is a valuable resource

Walt was amazing. He remembered more than I did about MY OWN CLASS of ship, and the exact area I worked in, and explained it better than I could. There was 1 more step to the oil strainers; that brass (?) yoke on top turns to the side, and the whole assembly of magnets pulls up out of the basket. The magnets get cleaned by hand with lint-free towels, inspecting for metal shavings. And lastly, just as the Purifier will accumulate sludge on the outside of the tube, so does the Sediment fall to the bottom in the Settling Tank. And there's only one way to get it out: you guessed it, by hand. I was one of the poor bastiches shoved in there, and I'd rather unclog sewer pipes any day. Nasty, NASTY job that is. Worse than cleaning a clogged bilge pocket, though not by much. The crud in the Settling Tank was anlke-height or slightly above when I scrambled in there. The majority you tried to scoop into the bottom drain with your hands to go into a container below. What was left over an hour or so later........well, there was you, a bucket, and a mountain of rags. Trying to not gag from the stench the whole time. Elephant Trunks were used to push fresh air into the space, but they basically only provided enough oxygen so you didn't die, and did nothing for the smell itself.

Love seeing the old timers explain the systems that they actually operated at one time.

You folks are fortunate indeed to have such a knowledgeable engineer as a volunteer on New Jersey. His explanation of the Lube Oil system was most interesting, similar to Dr. John Scholes at Battleship Cove in explaining the intricacies of naval fire control. You should feature more experts when you can find them. Thanks for the video.

Sharples purifier, never used it, always had DeLavals. Cleaned daily. 2190TEP. 2 for forced lube system, 190 is viscosity in SSUs. Retired MMC

We need more of Walt on camera! I'm also impressed he watched your videos ❤

The stenciling and color coding was standardized across the fleet. That allowed a sailor from one vessel to transfer to another and quickly be up to speed. There would certainly be details he'd have to learn about a new class, or even across ships of the same class, in order to be a system's expert; but the "big picture" was readily apparent to him immediately. That's especially important during wartime, or in a vessel designed for war, when crew casualties and turnover are expected to be high and you don't have the luxury of several peaceful months of indoctrination in order to get to know your way around your new workspace.

Oil King and Water King duties and responsibilities! Including tests and logs!

Really enjoyed Walt walking us through the process! Thank you!

I like this guy, let Walt tell us some stories and show us around.

I remember having to trace out each of the major engineering systems, identifying/locating valves, pumps, etc., as part of my SWO quals. Snipes are a special breed of sailor!

Pretty cool. My last ship was CV61 USS Ranger 1985-86. 🇺🇸

As a journeyman steamfitter i love these kinds of videos on similar systems that i get to work on daily!

Not bad at all but missed a couple of things. Lube oil cooler under your feet and sump level gage where the shaft goes through the bulkhead. Lower level watch, 2ER ‘88. There are also magnets in the strainers and we would run the purifier on the main sump while running as well. Settling tank was usually for auxiliary sump oil that has been changed out

When I visited the ship this summer Walt was my guide for the engine room tour. He was extremely knowledgeable about all the systems in that space and great to talk with, good to see him in the video.

The AC systems would be great to see.

Love the interview format with an expert!

If you haven't done it already, I'd love to see a video on the anchor winches and associated systems. I've been to the Big J once or twice before, and I think I got to see the anchor winches, on one of the tours, but that was over a decade ago, and I remember absolutely nothing about what the guide said in there.

2:02 being a combustion engine is only part of why we change oil in cars. The other is simply economics. The volume of oil is so small it's simply cheaper to just put new oil in, versus putting the necessary filtration equipment on the vehicle. Also, jet engines typically don't have their oil changed, simply topped off.

Walt's a gent. Really sounds super knowledgeable and knows his stuff!

I worked as a machinist back in the 70s late 80s, and went to machinist school in '78. Most of our instructors were WWII machinists who had made artillery gun pieces, ships guns, boilers for battle ships, you name it. One old guy told me a story about how he was supposed to drill thru the top of a large cast iron boiler where the bottom was solid for about a foot. He drilled and drilled and couldn't figure out why he wasn't breaking thru, when it dawned on him that he had the boiler upside down on the holding fixture, and had been drilling into solid iron. He knew his coworkers would tease him without mercy, so he got out his stamp kit and stamped O I L under the hole. He said he often wondered how many sailors over the years pumped oil into a blind hole.

The only ship I've ever looked at repeatedly in detail is the Texas, and even that is confusing. Thanks for the tour.

"Ooh, body lotion!" You got me with that one Walt! Very clean explanation, made it all make that little bit more sense. That little touch of Service Sarcasm just cracked me up! Good video, you should make more with qualified guys explaning a facet of their jobs. Makes a great document too, going forward.

We spent something like 45 minutes with Walt when I attended Battleship University on the NJ - he's awesome!!

That was interesting. I knew of the lube oil system, but never understood the setup until now. That was a beautiful and fairly comphrensive crash course about that system. How about doing one on the ballast/trim tanks, pumps, and plumbing? It would be interesting to learn how it all works together. Btw Ryan, have you seen the recent video from battleship Iowa about seeing the rollers of the turrets and actually seeing them in action? That was awesome, not everyday that one gets to see inner workings like that, especially to see them in action.

In general, I love your videos; thanks for making and posting them! One small complaint I have is that when Walt was pointing to some things, the camera stayed on him, and didn't show what he was pointing at.

Thanks Walt - that was an awesome overview of a complex system. Happy to watch as many of these operations videos you and Ryan might like to make. Thanks for the video guys.

I stood the last lower level watch before we went into drydock. They used 2 group to defuel the ship and next time I come to the ship I can explain this better to you Ryan.

I would like to start off by saying I absolutely love this channel and the info it provides, but when you have someone explaining a complex system such as this could you please have the camera pan to the things that he is pointing at and describing? Not trying to knock your guys' production in any way, just trying to get a better understanding of everything. Keep up the good work!

Kitty Hawk had integrated machinery rooms, with the reduction gears and turbines in the same space as the boilers. Ambient air temp by the boilers was right around 160 degrees while operating and underway.

The flange shields, also known as spray shields are made from aluminized fiberglass cloth. I have seen rubberized fiberglass cloth used, but we never did at LBNSY. Couple of the shields on the tank looked like they were inside out because I saw a seam showing on the outside

I think I've said it before, but I'll say it again. Battleship New Jersey has a great comment section. I love reading all the interesting stories people write here.

It’s amazing to think how many millions of man hours it took all the way from lobbying for the conception of the ship, planning and design requirements, finance, engineering design and specifications of every single nut and bolt, procurement of parts and materials, assembly and transportation of each component, shipyard management personnel to choreograph the thousands of people it takes to assemble all the components together as a whole, enough electrical wiring and plumbing for a small town, finalization and amendments of design and safety, training manuals for every individual component that had to be worked up typed and edited before publishing and distributing, thousands of gallons of paint and gear and hydrolic oil and teak wood for decking that all had to be produced then transported and applied, inspections and testing of everything from top to bottom, all the way down to the guy who had to drive down to the local package store to purchase the bottle of champagne for christening. That’s not to mention the forest of trees that had to be grown, fell, transported to be processed into paper, transported to a distributor, then transported to the Navy in order to become the literal mountain of paperwork that is required to simply send out orders to staff a ship of this size with its very first crew, much less the several hundreds of crew changes this ship will see over its lifespan. 🤯

We operated sump to sump on the main engine. The oil purifiers on some ships were also piped to auxiliary machinery to take a suction and purify the oil and return clean oil.

Kudos to Walt Rotherman[?] speaking well from his extensive knowledge...!

Freaking awesome! Definitely get more of these, hearing the personal experiences is invaluable!

Oil not only lubes it also removes heat.

Love getting to see down in the guts of the ship and hearing all about how she worked. Walt was great, his explanations were easy to follow and his personality got me laughing here and there. Hope he shows up in future vids sometime

Power generation/distribution Fresh water production/distribution I think with someone like Walt explaining things those would be very interesting. And please don’t feel the need to cut it down for time, a 30 minute video with Walt explaining the lube oil system would have been fine with me

2190 TEP oil was also used in the steering gear hydraulic systems. I spent 4 years and 2 deployments having steering gear room as my battle station. Underway watches were either throttles or top watch in engine room. During top watch we would change lube oil strainers once a watch. I served on DE/FF 1066 and DD 951.

I love "happy as a clam!" Please do more vids with Walt. I love hearing people who did the job describe it.

We've heard that many of the pumps (fuel, feedwater, lube oil) and fans are steam powered. How does the steam power the pump? Is it a reciprocating setup or a mini turbine?

Awesome video! When we visited this summer I really enjoyed the interpretation presented, and years of following the channel supplied great context to what I was viewing. Could have spent the whole day there. What if instead of signs you just posted a small QR code that linked to a video (current or upcoming) explaining that particular space? Keep up the awesome work!!

The training unit that I worked at did engineering plant training for senior officers (Captains and up), and one of the tasks that they performed was swapping lube oil strainers. One day an admiral screwed up and popped the cover off of a pressurized strainer. 2190 TEP everywhere. The mechanics thought that they would be cleaning the mess up, and so did one of the captains that was assisting the admiral. The admiral on the other hand, made it clear that the mess would be cleaned up by the people who made it, and that's what happened.

I’ve commented about this before but it would be awesome if you could find a former crewman who can walk you through the ships damage control pumping capacity and layout.

Since you touched a little bit on the going cold. Can you do a piece on cold start up, from firing the boilers to bringing everything up the temperature in the engine room to running ready

Walt guided my tour through the engine room (#4?) and barbette #2 this Saturday. He was hanging through the cutout and just yelled over at us and asked if we wanted to join the tour. Immense wealth of knowledge, and just as kind and personable as he sounds in this video.

I would be willing to watch videos on any and all subsystems that you want to do.

2190TEP, TEP stands for "Temperature, Extreem, Pressure." Its designed to operate between 120 and 160 Degrees fahrenheit. It will not work in automotive engines. It will breakdown and not lubricate; destroying the engine, (I had a couple of ship mates that tried it). Also it has none of the cleaning or suspention additives of motor oil.

1:02 I feel like this is a very meme-able Ryan expression. (With love! You're awesome bro, keep doing what you do.)

What about taking a look at the disbursing office. There has to be a cool safe in there to store cash for sailors during liberty.

First you check the oil by pulling out the really long dipstick. Then you dry dock the ship. Then someone goes under the ship with a really big wrench to undo the oil drain plug. Finally you pour about 10 barrels of 10w-30w into the crankcase. Did I get it right?

I saw the spray nozzles inside the gear reduction unit on the jacking gear video, I assumed those were for lube. Good to have the fireman confirm that.

Pretty good for a BT. The oil sump holds 1500 gallons and they would have carried an extra 1500 gallons. One thing of note the Navy used two types of oil purifiers, the sarples that you saw and the delavl the difference being the sarples had a three fin blade in the center and the delavl had a series of disks. The fin and the disks both did the same thing, giving the heavy dirt a place to rest and gather. These were cleaned as well once a day on the mid watch.

Engine oil is such a marvel, run an engine without it and wouldn't last not even 10 seconds without ruining it, keep with oil and their respective changes and would last years and years

Walt is an amazing old vet! I really enjoyed watching his muscle memory and effort to lift the lid on the strainer. Now, Let’s see the fresh and waste water handling systems!

I would love to see you make a video on the hydraulic system in the turrets. In turret one we leaked 10+ gallons of hydraulic fluid onto the electrical decks every day. I spent hours every week cleaning that up but I never found out where you put fresh hydraulic fluid into the system.

Thank you Walt and Team BBNJ! It’s brilliant that veterans can transfer some of their vast knowledge to current and future generations of curators.

What an amazing gentleman, loved his explanations.

As a former MM3, one of my favorite watches to stand was the Evaporator Watch. Ask Walt to take us through how the Evaps work and who gets priority on the fresh water they make. Spoiler alert, its not the sailors... 🙂

Thank you sir for sharing your knowledge!!

THANK'S RYAN ,, AND WALT... GREAT VIDEO!!!! AND INFO.,,,, MIN. SIGNS ARE BETTER SEEING IT LIKE IT WAS LIKE RYAN SAID ,,, IF YOU NEED TO KNOW MORE TAKE A TOUR.. THANK YOU!!!!

So Wise , Thank You. A fine explanation

Very well done video explaining an essential, but complicated system. I look forward to when I can visit Battleship New Jersey and gain from the knowledge of your Docents like Walt.

I want this video to include a 15 foot dipstick, and oil drain plug the size of a dinner table.

I've only recently discovered this channel and I find these discussions fascinating particularly on the vast systems that these ships use.

Thanks Walt great job !

It's an excellent video thank you both for this information.

that was excellent! really interesting. have to admire what it took to cut those gears 60 years ago. amazing,

What a great video! Great channel!

Reminds me of when I pumped 26 gallons of gasoline into my powerstroke f250, yeah the tank had 18 gallons of diesel floating on 26 gallons of gas. I used a siphon hose to draw the gasoline back out of the tank. The diesel was green and it was easy to know when to stop the siphon.

Thank you.....

And thank Walt for sharing his expertise and service in the USN to the USA.

It is great when you can get the guys that worked the systems to come in and talk about it. It's even better when they let you get it on video.

Amazing episode Walt is incredibly knowledgeable and it would be great to see more videos around the engineering spaces. Thankyou

Amazing upload. Thank you! I been asking these questions since elementry school!

This format is amazing...

Well done Walt, Ryan I hope you are documenting this man

I love to see these engineering parts of these ships!

Walt has some JACKED forearms for an older gentleman, yeesh.

Also noteworthy is that the inspection covers on the main reduction gears had very robust locks that only the Chief Engineer had access to. To open access doors for inspection required establishing a "clean area" with an access watch (Foreign Material Exclusion if you will) and an inventory of everything you took in to ensure it came out. Buttons on clothing had to be taped. Most of the time we took shirts off and just wore t-shirts. Those double helical, double reduction gears are highly machined and polished and very expensive. Story goes that a disgruntled sailor opened an access door before deployment and tossed in a bunch of bolts and nuts and destroyed them. Curious if anyone knows the real story.

Very cool. Thanks, guys. Semper Fi...

wonderful video

Very well explained by Walt... Thank You Sir... This was especially interesting for me. Anything engine related is a plus.... Thanks Ryan. Russ

Based on some mild research, 2190tep means :210 viscosity 90 weight tep:turbine engine petroleum. Pretty cool lubricant on its own actually

The best 5w40 @ 4 10,000 gallons

Turbine oil has a unique smell that is unforgettable.

You could take a deep look into the helicopter landing control room.

Walt was great. Mater of fact, it was obvious that he's been there and done it. Can you do another engineering video with Walt ?

I thought he would cover more about the Delaval oil purifier. That little piece of machinery is critical to your lube oil system. It had to work and if it went down it had to be fixed immediately. Remember what Walt said it removed water and solids from the oil. It is a simple machine that came from the Dairy industry and was used to separate the heavy creme from the milk. Some engineers figured out it could be used to purify heavy oil. That was the first piece of equipment that I learned to fix and rebuild in the engine room. The messenger on the Midwatch would cycle and clean the strainers and clean the disks and bowl on the purifier. It could be finicky in heavy seas. It used a water seal and if the ship was rocking and rolling hard it could lose that seal then it would pump oil into the bilge. That would be a disaster. Walt did a good job though.

Interesting quote: "Once you have got the oil separated, you can drain off the water. The water will go off to where all water goes." And where is that? Why the bilge of course! Eventually enough water will accumulate in the bilge and be pumped over the side. Bilge spaces run along the very bottom of the ship and take water from various pieces of machinery, condensation run-off, overflows, etc. and slosh around until the volume is great enough to pump out. As one might imagine, it's sort of nasty down there, but does have to be dried and the paint maintained from time to time. Cleaning the bilge could sometimes be the fate of a sailor who needs a bit of "extra military instruction." I'm sure there are some stories to be told.....

@9:56 Walt goes into auto pilot while inspecting the lube oil strainer basket.

Fascinating 🎉

Great overview, and good point on the importance of color coding of systems. But if you visit USS MASSACHUSETTS (BB-59) in Fall River, MA, you will notice the virtual absence of color coding. BB-59 was decommissioned in 1946, and never sailed again. Her machinery spaces retain their WW2 look, I.e., subdued paint, incandescent lighting, and virtually no color coding on any of her piping and valves.

Id like to see as much of a deep dive on the steam turbines (as much inside view as possible etc) and on the Reduction gears -- again same -- to see whats to see in there