I found this video very cool, to be able to really see the whole gun pit and just how absolutely massive it is. Just blows my mind that these magnificent ships were built so long ago when computers as we know them today didn't exist. Absolutely love all the remaining battleships here in the US and I intend to someday be able to visit all of them. Being able to walk in the footsteps of the greatest generation and those who served after them is such an amazing experience. Museum ships are living history that absolutely deserve to be preserved forever.
What I find staggering is just how relatively clean the last active duty crew left these areas. I had the opportunity to visit some of the areas below decks that aren't in the tour. The cleanliness of the combat bridge and the area that controls the turrets showed the care and respect they had for this ship.
Very informative. It’s strange that there was not a manual mechanism of lowering / raising the barrels when it was originally built, rather than this bodgy way of doing it. They did design a lot of redundant backups originally.
They may have had an auxiliary hydraulic generation system. I assume that trying to raise and lower the gun between loading and firing position would have taken so long that it was deemed useless. Plus they’d have to rotate the turret too and operate the lifts for the shells and powder.
Thank you for sharing this. The magnitude of these guns is astounding. I love that huge jack screw with the acme threads. The threads look like they might have been ground with such a high surface finish. Too bad the Navy didn't think to integrate a handwheel into the right angle gearbox at the top of that shaft you were turning. My respect also to the young lady who climbed that wall and turned the handwheel. It's obviously not an easy task.
Absolutely. That jack screw and the entire mechanism are so impressive. Still blows our minds. And no, the wheel isn't easy to turn, but getting up there to do it is kind of fun.
4:15 Grandfather was a Navy Reserve man, a chemical engineer and mechanic in civilian life, who was active duty during the world war. He mentioned more than once how odd he found it that most everything on most every Navy ship could be done by one man, but it was never wise to actually use only one man to do it. I can see what he means when you look at that device with the pin. The wheel can be turned by one man, sure, but it is an awkward position that one could easily slip out of and having a second man to steady the one doing the turning while watching to see the pin retract fully would definitely be wise and cut down on the risk of injury. Also explains why he preferred to always send the smallest person (often me) up ladders because it was a lot easier to catch a five-foot-six guy weighing 150 pounds than a six-footer weighing well over 200!
Regrettably never served. Even if i had served, I probably wouldnt have made it in time to serve aboard an Iowa. (I graduated school in 1990-i doubt I would have been sent to Missouri or Wisconsin right away..) However, i absolutely love these ships. Thank you for posting this video.
So for this to be possible in turret 2 a lot of this stuff must be intact enough to still function. Does turret 2 still have a range finder in it, does anyone know?
The T2 rangefinder was removed from the turret post-accident and rebuilt in Louisville KY. It was kept in storage for many years, and acquired by the IOWA after the ship was donated. It sits in a custom storage container in our service yard.
@@dougthompson1598 Crew reports from the time of removal seem to indicate the range finder was taken out by removing a soft patch from the range finder hood on the side of the turret. To get it back in, we'd have to remove one as well, which would be a major job, and we're not sure we have all the parts required to reinstall the range finder even if we do get the hood open.
Such a tremendous sense of scale seeing how cavernous the pit is for just one of the guns, and the amount of effort required to manually move it. There's a video of Mo firing rounds while at sea and seeing just how much movement the barrel has while it remains trained on its target shows just how much machinery was involved in these things.
Likely no. Expense is part of it, but we also don't want to put too much wear on the 80 year-old equipment. It's irreplaceable, so we want to use it sparingly.
In 2003 wife and I got a tour of the Watervliet Arsenal from the director of the museum. There was no one else there so we got to see quite a bit more. The display of the 16 inch barrel was amazing.
I would imagine that you could easily machine a collar to clamp on the pipe you were wrenching on; then put a chain or belt around it with an electric motor to spin it. From the amount of force you seemed to be exerting and the fact that the pipe seemed to spin a little on its own after you had let go of the wrench with each turn - it would seem that it wouldnt take a particularly large or high-powered motor either to do the job so long as the belt / chain is properly tensioned, and you dont just try to crank it at full speed.
As a mechanical engineer, these details were incredibly interesting to see, but I was afraid for the very likeable lady, as she could have fallen four meters unsecured. At the very least, she could have hurt herself very badly. Thanks again for this post.
@@comradevlad7459 As we understand it, these barrels were replacements in the post-Korean War era. Five are from Watervliet, and the others are from teh Washington Gun Factory. No clue on where they may have been headed.
You could probably lift those guns with a small portable hydraulic unit. Even with one that can connect to a wall socket. Hydraulic motors aren't hard to turn, you just need to isolate the circuits to not pressurize the whole system.
The Battleship New Jersey channel has a clip about this subject. The short answer is that it would probably be less expensive to design and build from scratch a new BB than recommission one. The hydraulics, fuel bunkerage and powerplant in particular have not been subject to required maintenance for thirty years or so and would require total replacement, which in practical terms would be impossible to do.
@@dougthompson1598 They absolutely could recommission them. For Missouri, Iowa, and Wisconsin, it was about 30 years from when they were decommissioned in the 1950's to when they were recommissioned in the 1980's. Only New Jersey had been in service more recently. This is about the same amount of time. Beside that, they couldn't actually build one of these now. There no rolling mills that can produce the huge armored plates. Also, I believe the army maintained that last machine capable of relining the guns and they scrapped it years ago. There are probably hundreds of other things I'm not even thinking of that are no longer possible to build or maintain on these ships.
Not really. The thing that is hardest is lining up the pins to lock the guns in place. The rest is really just pretending you're on a rowing machine with a pipe wrench. 😆
It's amazing how easily the gun moves all things considered. I might mention that Ridgid makes a pipe wrench with an aluminum handle with the same guarantee that is much, much lighter.
If the battleships had been reactivated for another generation of service, could the whole operation of the turret have been automated to the point where it was unmanned? Or would it have essentially had to be a brand new turret to accommodate all the necessary equipment changes?
Cost wise a whole new turret would be needed as well as the systems re ran into the ships main power plant to even ensure it was powered and did its job
I'm sure your insurance carrier would never allow it, but anytime you need to raise or lower the guns manually, I guarantee you could find several people willing to pay you for the privilege of doing that- maybe call it the azimuth tour to get it past the liability coverage folks and charge $100 and you'd be sold out so far into the future that there probably wouldn't even be tv shows anymore.
