Being able to be like "hey this document says this thing was done to the Iowa class battleships, let me just go check my Iowa class battleship" is a hell of a flex
@@anthonycavalliotis8736 Technically it is still fully armoured and if you pop someone on deck with a gun. It is technically able to fire back at an enemy. Therefore could be classed as such. Semantics I know but an interesting thought experiment
I can see a Navy bean counter asking why, exactly, we were permanently disabling in an irreversible fashion something as powerful as those turrets when we could just lock them in place temporarily with something you can undo... at this point well... probably not a thing you're gonna do.
what I'm hearing is that a dremel and a few big motors is all that stands between Ryan and having the firepower to declare the New Jersey as an independent floating country
Those welds did not look all that serious. I think, possibly, somebody with a heavy short handled sledge hammer could slam into that little piece of metal enough times to break the welds. Maybe even some big channel lock pliers or vice grips and a long bar for leverage could twist that piece of metal off. That said, the battery powered angle grinder would definitely be a winner.
i mean ... it is though, your not going to hand remove that without tools, OR without knowing its there, and most people who might try to steal it or use it for bad purposes dont know its there, well until now anyway, but that turret is effectively locked
@@ilenastarbreeze4978 I highly doubt it's effectively locked. Removed with tools? A sledge hammer would do it. How much force is that? The massive amount of force needed to rotate that turret weighing many, many tons wouldn't have much issue sheering off a little piece of 1/8x2" angle. The other issue is the welds at the bottom, this was obviously a hack job and I highly doubt they put any pre heat into that huge mass of metal at the bottom. Trying to weld a little angle onto a huge piece of cold steel would result in extremely poor fusion, the welds would probably crack off at the bottom before the angle itself yielded and broke. If anyone needs anything clarified just ask, I do this for a job.
Great video explaining what I asked the USS Alabama BB-60. They replied that they could manually crank the turrets but it was extremely slow. They said during the filming of the movie Under Seige, it took like 6 hours of hand cranking to get the turret in the position for a few shots the movie director wanted.
Ryan has said in a previous video that the Iowa class lack such hand driven cranks... even if they were massively geared, the turrets just weigh too much to move by hand. Interesting to know some BB's did have them though
In theory, since the motion required to actually move (even something as small as this) is not that big (it would be counterproductive to have an excessively hard to move turret, hence the many, big rollers inside) that by disconnecting the gearing inside, for them to move the turrets by winch from the inside. That said, Ryan is a bit incorrect... considering the tech advancements we've made today, the motor powering the hydraulics, and even the hydraulic pump itself, ... they're obsolete. Strong, bulky, sturdy, but obsolete. We've had some pretty big changes in motor design alone, allowing for really compact, but powerful units. A proper engineering team (with work in the field) could retrofit the existing setup to move the turret, slower, but under the amp load limit of the shore power. I don't know about prices in US, but at least here in EU, the prices wouldn't be astronomical for a job that big. I know of a 44 ton carousel setup that moves with something like 15k Euros worth of motor and hydraulic pump at something like 10 rotations per minute.
@@aserta That pretty much sums up my gut feeling of Ryans' explanation being more of "we have no means/rights/need to do it" case rather than "it can't be done".
It's also the simplest, most efficient way to take out something that's "decommissioned" not "scrapped". We sometimes mothball houses that cannot be restored (funds), but are of historic value. We don't "weld" the doors shut, we bar the doors from the inside and climb out of an easily accessible spot that can be sealed up from the outside.
@@aserta That must be pretty interesting to do. It is a bit sad to see old barns that have collapsed in the rural parts of the Northeast. If walls could talk.
I earned my ESWS pin on the Jersey, and I was part of her decommissioning crew in 1990. There is a way to manually rotate the turrets by hand, when the locking pins are removed. If you can find any of the old 16 inch .50 Cal Gunner’s Mates, I’m sure they can tell you how it’s done.
yes, one would imagine there probably is, if just to do the final small movements needed to align the locking pins when centering the turret. It will of course be EXTREMELY slow as the mechanical reduction needed will be massive.
A 300hp 480v motor is rated for around 360amps full load. They can pull 5x that for a split second during startup that's why the breaker is so big. You could install a soft start or VFD to get the motor to ramp up slowly to not trip your 1200amp breaker.
Plus, it makes absolutely no sense to not be able to turn the turrets off shore-power purely for maintenance or repair. If a motor goes out, you need to be able to run a replacement motor to verify it's fixed, and I highly doubt they'd fire up a boiler and get a turbogenerator spinning purely for such routine tasks. Same with the movement of the turrets in general: They'd probably need a regular wiggle just to make sure they didn't rust into place.
The insulation on the windings of that 1940s motor probably couldn't take the voltage gradients from the VFD. They'd be better off using wrenches to turn the gears directly. That's how the team on Iowa elevated one of their barrels. It takes hours but doesn't risk damaging anything.
Yeah breakers for motors that size are generally just sized for the the conductors, as the motor will have external/internal protections of its own. Generally it is 4:1, but up to 8:1 is code. It's very likely the grid won't like that load at all. Especially because it's a random burst of load. Just flipping on a 300hp motor randomly is a great way to get unfriendly visits from the power company.
Bravo to you Ryan for dispelling another rumor about the 16" guns and their disability. I believe as you do that the Navy would not disable the ships in such a way that they could not be reactivated.
The fact is USS New Jersey and the other museum ships are still US Navy property. In a sense they're "loaners" to the various museum organizations that showcase them, so it doesn't make sense that the Navy would permanently cripple them. It's not likely the NJ will ever be returned to service but you never know, do you?
@@wayneantoniazzi2706 Missiles are nice and all, but there's nothing quite like a large-caliber artillery barrage to completely demoralize and/or destroy any ground formations within range. I still hate that the Army got rid of the 8" M110 howitzers, those things were damned impressive, when you're on the edge of an impact area you can definitely tell the difference between 155s impacting and those monsters. :D The Iowas' 16" rifles could still have a role for shore bombardment, and they were all fitted to launch Tomahawks so could also strike targets far beyond the range of their guns. Plus, with all that armor they're far more likely to survive hits from anti-ship missiles (though the anti-torpedo protection would probably need a huge upgrade).
Didn't Ryan do a video a while back about how reactivating the ship would be such a long, complicated process that it would be cheaper and quicker to build a new ship from scratch? And also the new ship would be way better because... um... new and modern technology?
Great find! I’d be tempted to grind off the plate on one locking assembly just to see if the pin could be withdrawn and reinserted. But that’s just me. 🇺🇸👍🏻
sure thing ;) and when it's out.... well, the engineer in me keeps thinking "if they can draw 1000amps from shore, sure one could figure out some electrical wizzardry to activate the motor at part power without it trying to draw it's full load". would be fun, seeing her rotating her turrets!
@@wolfhalupka8992 Do not bother with the main motor, just use a smaller hydraulic pump to provide pressure. Will slew very slowly, but still within power limits. After all the main power bank had to provide enough flow to move a few hundred tons of gun in conjunction with a gunnery computer to compensate for both the motion of the ship and wave action making it roll, so had to be able to compensate very fast, with high flows.
@@wolfhalupka8992 Also, a 300 horse power (a little more than 200 kW) motor needs MUCH less than 1000 amps at any reasonable voltage. There's something wrong with that calculation. The huge breakers might be for the whole turret, not just the slew motor? Of course the ship's internal electrical system might use different voltage from the shore power?
@@SeanBZA people keep saying this assuming there is a separate electric motor and hydraulic motor with lines connecting them that could be separated and a different pumping system added. typical of what we would see today on modern hydraulic systems. Based on some footage from other devices on the ship Ryan has refereed to as electro hydraulic . The rotating mechanism may be one gigantic housing electric and hydraulic portions all in one, and if that is the case it’s likely bypassing the motor wouldn’t be possible I really don’t have the answer, but I don’t think it’s safe to assume that an 80 year old system works just like a modern tractor, and all the same tricks apply.
After my visits to the Wisconsin and then Texas I ran across an article, at least for Texas, that the turrets had a manual system for rotating their turrets in case of a massive power outage during battle.
Found another comment from planehogger. It takes the USS Alabama BB-60 6 hours to move the turrets by hand, with a hell of a lot of help by ropes. Not practical to use during battle.
Maybe for the secondary turrets, not the primaries though. Youd never be able to rotate them at anywhere near a useable speed while underway and under fire.
@@killergames391 the turrets are balanced in all positions. But in case of damage, you would want some means to return a turret to centerline to get the guns out of the way.
Ryan, the 300 HP electric motor was able to move the turret at 4 degrees per second, who says you need to move the turret at that speed. Move a side the 300 HP motor and install a much lower HP/current motor the turret moves but at a much lower rate. As long as the motor can produce the hydraulic press needed the volume/flow can be less.
absolutely, otherwise if you wished to aim rhe turrents a few degrees off set like HMS Belfast, you could rent a large diesel generator to make the power. or like they said just run the exsisting motor at a lower draw for slower operation, or a newer more efficient motor. if the only physcial barrier is the pins being 'welded' in palce, then you can find solutions for the other problems.
@@Simon-ho6ly like for the Jaws of life, but how much PSI is the Hydaulic system in the turret? Most Portable Hydraulic Generators from firetrucks make 10,000 psi peak. although other larger ones exsist.
I think the issue is the 300 hp electrohydraulic motor is probably inside a heavily armored compartment. by the days of the iowas there was basically no way to hand crank a turret that heavy so you probably armored the hell out of the machinery instead
The motors on the turrets are designed to move the turrets while underway in a heavy seaway. Moored at the dock, in essentially level conditions, the turret motors wouldn't take anywhere *NEAR* their full rated power draw. I'd be willing to bet a case of beer that (after cutting that piece of steel off of that pin) the turrets would move quite nicely on shore power alone.
Part of me wants to see the turrets rotate just for laughs and part of me wants to have it done to stick it to the Navy for the "oh! but the turret welds!" shenanigans. I mean... even if you did need full power to engage the hydroelectric motor to turn the turrets... You can meet the demand with portable generators and decent electrician work. Wouldn't be pretty and it would just be symbolic (which is the point), but it would work. Hell, more janky things have been done officially in the Navy historically anyways.
@@matchesburn Well, you'd have to agree that the turrets ARE welded into place, so the navy didn't lie That the welds are so insignificant, that they can be broken with a good whack of a sledgehammer,... details
This is the sort of video that makes this channel great. It's not big or showy. It's information that can only be found because you guys have an Iowa Class battleship to hand whenever necessary, and you're curious to explore all the things that make Battleship New Jersey what it is. Edit: And when it comes to making one of the turbo generators operational... it's better to ask for forgiveness from the Navy instead of permission. I mean what are they going to do, confiscate the battleship and ground the entire staff for a week?
It is very unfair though to others that don't have their own Iowa class battleship... As for turbo generators - while all that stuff is shut, there is no risk from weapon system because any attempt to start everything in short order would likely fail. However if the ship would have running power grid capable of operating main armament, it is not that difficult to produce shells and powder charges. I think it is better this way, the only option to keep them more operational would be if they were on naval base and with formally navy crew.
They've already been told no. Asking for forgiveness because you did something that you were explicitly told not to do is not going to get you very far. If the Navy had never said anything about reactivating certain systems, and then the museum crew decided to give it a shot, one could make the argument that they were never told no. In this case they clearly been told, in a legal contract, no.
@@bastarddoggy yup I think it would actually lead to quick contract revocation and scrapping of the ships. Any such attempt would need to be agreed in advance.
Absolutely awesome learning all this detail. These ladies, though built for destruction, represent the culmination of 500 years of naval architecture and tecnology and are invaluable pieces of history to show how things were done, with slide rules, drafting tables and welding torches. No school like the old school.
There's online documentation from the decommissioning crew and yard workers that NJ had a partially welded jack screw for one of the barrels. The action was stopped and not done on any of the other ships. Dying to know if this is true. Seems easy enough to plop down in the gun pits and find out.
If that were the case they wouldn't have been able to elevate the barrels when they started the museum in 2001. Which they were able to if you come aboard and see her today, at least on turrets nos 1 and 2. Must be on 3 if anywhere.
@@bradyeverett9225 So the report stated that the welding was just started before someone was able to stop it. It didn't effect the ability to raise the barrels. This could all be nonsense though...
@@terryboyer1342 - The ship is next to Camdem & Philadephia. I bet there are plenty of rats in both towns, to adequately make that treadmill move the turret. Probably enough to turn the screws to get her going at her rated 33 knots !
I love all the people in the comments suggesting to get a small motor and turn the turrets! Come on Ryan. You know you want to. This is why I am here. Getting into the places you can't see when on the ships Tour.
I don't know you would even have to cut that weld to remove the pin. it looks like you could just unbolt that cap and access the pin directly and screw it out from down the the acess. This wasn't welding to decommission, this was welded so that some dumbo didn't play with the wrong thing. Things like this happened all the time because it's just that extra 5% that takes it from able to be messed with to "special tools required" also, if it's a threaded pin they may have worried about it backing out if there's a little play in it. over the years if there's any slop, the moving of the water will cause the turret to want to walk that back up and out of the threads. this is basically just a cheap easy way to non-destructively prevent that
Yea, kinda thinking the same thing, but more along the lines of making sure the guns don't rock on the gearing and bearings, wearing them down or breaking them, then to keep then safe from "some dumbo".
It also looks like whoever welded that piece on, couldn't do a decent weld either. Shocking quality of work if I say so myself. 5 minutes with a 4.5inch disc grinder and it would be loose.
@@sirmalus5153 my guess is zero prep and a quick stick weld. It's not made to be a good job, it's made to jam things up and get cut off quickly. I do stuff like that at work when in just putting a clamp on the bench or something like that
@@sirmalus5153 it's don that way so you can easily find and remove the part. If the welding had been done nicer it could have been hard to find the welding during a reactivation
You know I'm in law enforcement and I've heard so many times over the years when I've had an old patrol car people ask if the police engine had been removed and I said of course not. It would make no sense for a law enforcement agency to spend money to remove a part and put some other part in it the battleship is the same way if the Navy were to ever need the ship why would they weld around the barbet to make the gun turrets inoperable. So as Ryan said it is a simple small thing that prevents the turrets from turning and it would be just as easy to reactivate the ship should some catastrophe happen and the Navy would need it again.
Your comment immediately made me think of the Crown Victoria. Like battleships, they're tough cars that can take a lot of abuse and they're built to last. I drive an '87 Crown Victoria, the square bodied "LTD" generation, and after watching Ryan's videos and gaining an interest in battleships, I made a joke to some friends that I had commissioned my car "BB-87. USS Crown Victoria"
@@erikterock9071 I just got a chuckle reading your comment. I also drive a 1987 Crown Victoria wagon and have in my collection a 1991 Crown Victoria wagon and recently purchased a 1989 Mercury Grand Marquis. Like the battleship's they are durable and built for duration.
@@AugustusTitus Yes, the engines did change. The 1979-1991 police models did indeed have the 5.8. Mine is a civilian model with the 5.0. It's underpowered just enough to be annoying, but as reliable as I could ever ask for.
The whole point of the navy putting them in museums was so that, if it became necessary, they could, theoretically, re-commission them. It makes no sense at all that would hard weld the turrets in place at a point that would destroy the mechanisms themselves for future use.
Not really, this was done when they were put to reserve, not museum donation. The potential for them to be mobilized was primarily aimed at by what is and is not allowed contractually, but only to a point and that point is mostly gone because navy got rid of whole lot stuff needed to support them.
Once gone from the property of the state, they're gone. As museum ships (and outside the gov's care) they're no longer usable. They're governed under an agreement plan (as Ryan states) but that's about as far and wide as the reach of the gov goes. Well, maybe if the museum tried to ... i dunno, sell the ship to another country's military... but that might be in the agreement papers as well. This mod we see here, isn't done for museum deactivation purpose, this is done because it's the cheapest simplest method to stop this turret from turning. I've seen this thousands of times, if there's an easy way out to stop something from doing something, where the need to keep the mechanism at large in existence is in place, the shortest, easiest path is always taken. Old buildings, they take the cogs out of the elevator mechanisms. They cut the first floor ladders out. The're doors barred with concrete blocks to stop the door from opening. Bunkers, they will just cut the wires to the electric motor or drain the hydraulic fluid out of the hydraulic motors. Even saw a bunker where they basically removed the metal link bar from the safety system, so once all but the escape shutter doors were closed, they could never be opened and then poured a concrete plug on top of that final door. Easily reversible. There's a bunker complex in Italy, they just walled up the main entrance, you can still get inside the old cableways.
@@aserta The Iowa's are special case. Recievers of the ships have to keep a minimal level of maintenence on the ships so they could'theorticly be returned to service of necessary.. That restrction was supposed to end in 2011 when, as the law states asufficent replacemtn system of equal or greater firepaower could realized.The problem, is, the railgun is far from being as ready as they hoped. Hence why Iowa was moved to LA, becuase the curators in SF couldn't afford the minimum maintanence required by the law any more. Two, while fully decommissioned, are still listed on a reserve list. The other, while not on the reserve list, still must have minimum maintaince so they can be used for parts if the other two are returned to servivce. The Battleships are the only servicable weapon the navy has that can do close shore support for large scale amphibious landings. Aircraft, while they do surgical strikes, just arent capabable of staying on station and essentailly carpet bombing the shoreline and near shore defenses. Until the railgun system is ready, the Iwoa's are not fully released from the navy by law. They can still be recalled and have to be maintained for that possiblity. No, museum curators do not have carte blanche to do whatever they want with them. The navy is using the museums as simply free long term storage.
"navy putting them in museums was so that, if it became necessary, they could, theoretically, re-commission them." Like, say, in case of alien invasions where the invaders fire toy-peg-looking shells at ships happen to drop down and challenge both the United States Navy and Hollywood to a game of "Battleship."
@@aserta "Once gone from the property of the state, they're gone" Oh man, I got a good laugh out of that one. But, no. Wrong. Read the Defense Production Act Executive Order from 2012 and see what the feds can legally do. If tomorrow fedgov showed up at USS New Jersey and said we're talking it back... there would be no debate. It would happen. Regardless of who "owned" the New Jersey on paper or not or if it was in civilian hands. To give you an idea, do you know what happened on CV-10 a few years back? USMC personnel showed up, said "let us see your static display F/A-18" and started taking spare parts off of it. And no one was going to stop them, regardless of it the F/A-18 was on loan, civilian owned, leased, whatever. It doesn't matter. Fedgov gets what it wants. Always. Period. Even if they have to trample over you to get it.
IF the pins were removed.there should be a manual gear reduction drive in the turret...on either the south Dakota or NC class such a drive exists..it is like 3 hours to move...same with elevation of the guns. I saw a video of one of the memorial battleships lowering their guns to put the bloomers on...perhaps Massachusetts or Missouri
@@ionstorm66 I bet its possible to decouple the hydraulics and then use a block and tackle on the barrels to the deck since its just sitting on rollers
My maternal grandfather Tommy Lamont was a Royal Navy gunner in WW1, invallided out with 'shell shock' and damage to his heart that he carried to his grave in the 1970s. My uncle, his son, also Tommy Lamont, served on HMS Eagle during the 50s & 60s. I just caught the videos of battleship USS Missouri firing her 16" guns, and the route in and out of a 16" gun turret on USS Iowa. I find your videos highly enlightening, in being able to try imagine the conditions that my granda Lamont served under, why the men he served with were such close friends for the rest of their days. Ships he served on were sunk from under him in multiple WW1 sea battles.
Most likely the Navy at the time was not happy with retiring the ships, but the good part is they are being kept clean and somewhat repaired for future use if needed
It's so cool that we get to see these hidden areas on the New Jersey, places that probably only a handful of people have ever seen in the ship's lifetime!
Shore power is intended to provide "Hotel Services" to allow crew to live onboard pierside while the plant is shut down. There should be enough excess capacity past that point to allow powering the minimum required to light off 1 boiler. The general plan is that you use shore power to bring up one boiler, allowing you to bring up a Turbine Generator. Once that TG is up, you have enough power to start bringing up the rest of the plant. That said, how you checked the rated outputs of the Emergency Diesel Generators? Any one of them should be adequate to bring up a boiler, and I'd be surprised if there wasn't enough power to operate at least 1 turret and support equipment. (They should all have breakers/bus ties on the main board)
I'm sure the answer is "we have no idea" but surely there has to be some sort of manual backup to rotate the turret in a severe emergency right? Like a wheel or screw with some super crazy gear ratio. Like say the ship took severe damage in battle lost all power and had to be towed to port, but the turrets were blocking entry into port or something. The navy definitely had some sort of backup to prevent this kind of situation.
Yes. It's called removing the turret with a barge crane. If the ship lost all power (like SoDak, but on a more permanent basis) then aux power would be supplied by an assisting ship, which the turret motor would run off of. If the turret motor is wrecked in such a way that it can't be repaired in situ, WITHOUT wrecking the rest of the traverse mechanism somehow (maybe an electrical fire?) then the would have to pull the turret. Each turret weighs ~3000 tons. Manual operation of the turret, no matter how many reduction gears you add, is not possible. It is just too heavy.
@@michaelwanamaker9829 Would the emergency generators be able to provide enough to run the motor in a lower gear? Furthermore, didn't each turret have its own emergency generator?
@@calenedgar3722 I’m sure he’s talked about the power capacity of the emergency diesel generators, but I’m also sure that they can’t provide 1800 A of current. As far as centering the guns, you might be able to use a tug and the barrels as a lever.
@@dcviper985 ship has a paid of 250KW generators. A single turret draws more power than that total. It would not be practical to operate the turrets if the main power was down, you would need power for other more important things like DC.
Is there any "back up" to moving the turrets like there is for manually turning the rudders??? Like 2,000 turns of a crank to move the turret 3 degrees?
There's spare motors... also pumping the hydraulic fluid. No matter what redundant traverse motors you use, you're still gonna be pulling 1.8kA from something. If the spare diesel generators in the keel's void space, or the turbines aren't producing power, you have much bigger issues than "we can't turn the turret" ;)
In older ships there would likely have been a solution that allowed crew to turn turrets mechanically but as electrical and hydraulic systems became more reliable this would have become increasingly redundant (and pointless due to the sheer inertia of the turret and increase in requisite manpower)
"Give me a lever long enough and a fulcrum on which to place it, and I shall move the world." - Archimedes. There is almost certainly a manual mechanism to rotate the turrets, likely at a glacial pace. Would be a fun hours-long exercise for some volunteers and would make a high view count video if you wanted to investigate and give it a try.
Given the way things were done in the Navy back in the '40s, I assume the "mechanism" was, in fact, several hundred young men with no latitude to refuse instructions, however absurd. :)
That is way more than a 300HP motor should draw. I suggest you look at the nameplate. If it is sevuced at 460V it should have a full load Amos rating of something like 400 amps. The breaker may be that rating to allow it not to trip on the starting inrush current of the motor.
That's called the interrupting rating of a fuse/breaker and I think you're probably right. I think max locked rotor would still be under 2500A on a 300hp motor...
@@ghost307 Yes, and a properly functioning breaker should allow that through. A breaker can trip either magnetically, which protects from short circuits, or thermally, which protects it from sustained overloads. Motor inrush current shouldn't be high enough to trip a breaker magnetically or sustained for long enough to trip it thermally.
A quick fix if they ever do reactivate the ship. A few minutes of grinding and the pins can be removed. And you can tell the Navy was thinking ahead with how well moving parts are greased. I doubt they welded anything other than those pins. It took how many years to find those welds? That shows thought and ease of use
I’d love to see the 16” guns elevated and trained…preferably(?) not on Philadelphia, though! It’s not impossible; there’s a air museum that moves their Concorde’s nose/visor to the take off and landing positions. Pleeeease….?
As a Pittsburgher; I insist that the guns be trained in the general direction of Philly at least once a month!! Also I believe youre thinking of the Imperial War Museum in Duxford. They have a great youtube channel going over all of their planes.
If you really wanted to move your turrets to pose them for whatever purpose, you would need to bring a generator on board (could be rented) and feed power directly to the turret swing controls. Your local United Rentals could find you the right size generator.
Ryan I am extremely impressed at what you and your crew will do to get access to some of the smallest areas of the ship! And allow us to gain greater knowledge of little or not so little intricacies that would not be available otherwise. Thank you so much
Wow. This is such an amazing behind the scenes video. Thank you Ryan for your work. It’s absolutely amazing to see someone exploring such an incredible piece of history with such knowledge and passion. Found this channel a few years ago and have been hooked ever since. My dad was an Air Force fighter pilot but my grandfather was a Navy medic. Thank you for keeping this piece of history alive.
Yup, but that’s sort of what you’d want as part of your efforts to mothball a ship. Your modifications should be the minimum necessary to make the ship ready for long-term storage, while simultaneously as easy to reverse as you can make them. The pin is already doing the hard work of keeping the turret from rotating. All you need is to keep someone from mistakingly raising the pin.
Do the Iowas have a mechanical backup for any of the turret systems? Texas has the chain falls, then again, Texas also has backup steering after the electric and steam steering systems; I think we recently established that the Iowas have a mechanical adjustment, but not full rudder travel without the powered systems.
@@ghost307So then the museum could turn the turrets without energizing the motors if they really wanted to, but probably not on any regular basis such as they do for some of their other equipment.
Ive watched ALL of the videos on this channel. I really didnt think you had anything cool left to tell me... but this video proves I was very wrong. This might have been the coolest video Ive seen. Very interesting info and I love that you guys just figured out this mystery too. Awesome work and thanks for opening the floor for us to see! I love this channel. No other warship youtube channel does it better... and after I found you guys I looked hard... you guys make the best content in the game.
Interesting, cool information. To show American pride and heritage I still wish the Navy would have kept one Iowa class Battleship in service, and made a fleet with it like they do with the aircraft carriers. Maybe like with a smaller pocket carrier and ships.
The cost would be astronomical. The US navy can't even afford to operate the ships that it needs, let alone one that would only be ceremonial. And the US has the world's largest defense budget by a significant margin.
Ryan you give up too easily. Whatever turns or rotates under power almost always has a manual wheel to operate the thing when power is lost. emergency steering for example, yes it takes several thousands manual turns on the wheel to move it, but its there. The turrets must have a manual rotation gear in there somewhere.
Or find away to lower the amount of amperage the motor draws. Imagine letting people pay to operate the forward gun turret. Just install sensors and a computer to limit the movement allowed and a button for emergency stop.
@@ThePTBRULES Yeah, I mean it takes a lot of power to turn the turret fast , if you reduce the speed, this also reduces the power needed. Of course the question is if it is possible to reduce the speed without heavily modifying anything.
@@ThePTBRULES Keep in mind the breakers are only for extreme overcurrent and to prevent the wiring from catching on fire. It's not what the motor is rated at.
You can convert horsepower to kW. 300hp is 223.71kW. W=A*V. Assuming a 450V motor, that’s 497.133A. However, given the amperage of the breaker mentioned, it is probably a 125V motor as that would draw 1789.68A. Wikipedia mentions that the SSTG’s provide 450V power. Based on my experience in the Navy, shore power is supplied at the same voltage as the generators. This means that the 1200A shore power breaker can provide 540kW of power. Over double what the turret needs to spin. So, yes. They can rotate A SINGLE turret on shore power easily.
I rarely write comments.. But I wanted to say how awesome I think you are with these. I love seeing things on military equip. that we normally wouldnt see. Semper Fi !
Does this count as a research breakthrough? It pretty definitively puts one of the longest-running myths about these ships to rest, so I feel like this counts as a research breakthrough.
Love your information and complete explanation, I love restoring antique buses, and trains. When I see the paint chips I just want to run for a sweeper and clean it and paint it, of course taking safety in mind with the old paint, but there is nothing like bringing something old back to work, it's fulfilling and fun.
@@BattleshipNewJersey so... Now that Iowa has turned one of its turrets, how long does it take for you guys to make it work? I specifically want to see Ryan dremeling the welded pieces of iron off, that hold the locking pins in place😂 After an hour or so you should hand him the angle grinder over.😜
Then we use other systems, like ICBMs, ground-based AA, or even an old Starship with a 150 ton nuclear bomb.
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Great Video. It is interesting how you still find out things about your "own" museum ship. It is also intersting how this kind of misunderstanding can be created and then be accepted fact.
Awesome video!!! Fascinating information on how this was done and a great look at the practicality of it being quickly undone if needed. Shame about not being able to rotate the turrets. It'd be awesome to see.
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Being able to be like "hey this document says this thing was done to the Iowa class battleships, let me just go check my Iowa class battleship" is a hell of a flex
Yep!
Topped by "Let me check with the other 3 guys with an Iowa class battleship, I have their personal number in my contact list."
It's not a Battleship now. Unable to Defend it self from an Enemy.
@@anthonycavalliotis8736 Technically a lot of the armor is still on those warships to defend them from incoming fire, so bleh :p
@@anthonycavalliotis8736 Technically it is still fully armoured and if you pop someone on deck with a gun. It is technically able to fire back at an enemy. Therefore could be classed as such. Semantics I know but an interesting thought experiment
I agree with Ryan, the welds are an expedient, designed to secure the various devices in place, not to prevent their use in the future.
I also agree. I would bet that they did to any turreted ship in reserve so that the turrets don't move unexpectedly when not in use.
I can see a Navy bean counter asking why, exactly, we were permanently disabling in an irreversible fashion something as powerful as those turrets when we could just lock them in place temporarily with something you can undo... at this point well... probably not a thing you're gonna do.
what I'm hearing is that a dremel and a few big motors is all that stands between Ryan and having the firepower to declare the New Jersey as an independent floating country
It’d take about an hour with a dremel. Better to use an angle grinder
Why would they need a a Battleship. I don't think anyone would put up a fight for New Jersey leaving the Union.
@@snagletoothscott3729 NYC would.
@@asm826 Could scare the crap out of the people sitting in Trenton, they remember the British.😁
Those welds did not look all that serious. I think, possibly, somebody with a heavy short handled sledge hammer could slam into that little piece of metal enough times to break the welds. Maybe even some big channel lock pliers or vice grips and a long bar for leverage could twist that piece of metal off. That said, the battery powered angle grinder would definitely be a winner.
I've been missing the "Ryan-in-a-small-dirty-space" videos! Always a pleasure to see what the BB-62 crew has come up with for us today. Thank you!
Wednesday with Ryan: Getting the turrets to move again would be very simple and cheap.
Thursday from USN: Can we have our battleship back please?
Friday From Congress: "HISSSS! NO! MONEY OURS! NO MONEY FOR NAVY! HISSSS!"
Don't laugh they did it to the Quonset Air Museum AFTER they restored a Grumman TBM fished out of the bay. RIP QAM
As a structural ironworker, this is hilarious. Claiming you welded a battleship turret into place with a little piece of angle.
Government contracts go to the lowest bidder.....
i mean ... it is though, your not going to hand remove that without tools, OR without knowing its there, and most people who might try to steal it or use it for bad purposes dont know its there, well until now anyway, but that turret is effectively locked
Makes sense charge $100,000 to disable turrets couple of 2"welds rest of the money in the back pocket that's how military procurement works
@@ilenastarbreeze4978 I highly doubt it's effectively locked. Removed with tools? A sledge hammer would do it. How much force is that? The massive amount of force needed to rotate that turret weighing many, many tons wouldn't have much issue sheering off a little piece of 1/8x2" angle. The other issue is the welds at the bottom, this was obviously a hack job and I highly doubt they put any pre heat into that huge mass of metal at the bottom. Trying to weld a little angle onto a huge piece of cold steel would result in extremely poor fusion, the welds would probably crack off at the bottom before the angle itself yielded and broke.
If anyone needs anything clarified just ask, I do this for a job.
But it *is* technically welded in a locked position.
Great video explaining what I asked the USS Alabama BB-60. They replied that they could manually crank the turrets but it was extremely slow. They said during the filming of the movie Under Seige, it took like 6 hours of hand cranking to get the turret in the position for a few shots the movie director wanted.
Supposedly that took the use of at least one deck capstan, padeyes and a whole lot of cable.
Ryan has said in a previous video that the Iowa class lack such hand driven cranks... even if they were massively geared, the turrets just weigh too much to move by hand. Interesting to know some BB's did have them though
@@roadsweeper1
It is possible that he didn't know back then, as this pin could actually serve for that crank put possibly only in a repair yard.
In theory, since the motion required to actually move (even something as small as this) is not that big (it would be counterproductive to have an excessively hard to move turret, hence the many, big rollers inside) that by disconnecting the gearing inside, for them to move the turrets by winch from the inside.
That said, Ryan is a bit incorrect... considering the tech advancements we've made today, the motor powering the hydraulics, and even the hydraulic pump itself, ... they're obsolete. Strong, bulky, sturdy, but obsolete. We've had some pretty big changes in motor design alone, allowing for really compact, but powerful units. A proper engineering team (with work in the field) could retrofit the existing setup to move the turret, slower, but under the amp load limit of the shore power. I don't know about prices in US, but at least here in EU, the prices wouldn't be astronomical for a job that big. I know of a 44 ton carousel setup that moves with something like 15k Euros worth of motor and hydraulic pump at something like 10 rotations per minute.
@@aserta That pretty much sums up my gut feeling of Ryans' explanation being more of "we have no means/rights/need to do it" case rather than "it can't be done".
This "welding" makes so much sense when considering the Navy would want to make it as easy as possible to reactivate the ship at a later date.
Or just not go to unnecessary time, labor, and expense when a simple thing like a little metal plate will do.
It's also the simplest, most efficient way to take out something that's "decommissioned" not "scrapped". We sometimes mothball houses that cannot be restored (funds), but are of historic value. We don't "weld" the doors shut, we bar the doors from the inside and climb out of an easily accessible spot that can be sealed up from the outside.
@@177SCmaro This is probably also, if not more, true.
@@aserta That must be pretty interesting to do. It is a bit sad to see old barns that have collapsed in the rural parts of the Northeast. If walls could talk.
I earned my ESWS pin on the Jersey, and I was part of her decommissioning crew in 1990. There is a way to manually rotate the turrets by hand, when the locking pins are removed. If you can find any of the old 16 inch .50 Cal Gunner’s Mates, I’m sure they can tell you how it’s done.
God that would be so cool to see
Now we just need to him some bags of powder so he can do a blank broadside on the 4th.
yes, one would imagine there probably is, if just to do the final small movements needed to align the locking pins when centering the turret. It will of course be EXTREMELY slow as the mechanical reduction needed will be massive.
@@Murgoh still that would be so God damn cool
A 300hp 480v motor is rated for around 360amps full load. They can pull 5x that for a split second during startup that's why the breaker is so big. You could install a soft start or VFD to get the motor to ramp up slowly to not trip your 1200amp breaker.
Plus, it makes absolutely no sense to not be able to turn the turrets off shore-power purely for maintenance or repair. If a motor goes out, you need to be able to run a replacement motor to verify it's fixed, and I highly doubt they'd fire up a boiler and get a turbogenerator spinning purely for such routine tasks. Same with the movement of the turrets in general: They'd probably need a regular wiggle just to make sure they didn't rust into place.
The insulation on the windings of that 1940s motor probably couldn't take the voltage gradients from the VFD. They'd be better off using wrenches to turn the gears directly. That's how the team on Iowa elevated one of their barrels. It takes hours but doesn't risk damaging anything.
Yeah breakers for motors that size are generally just sized for the the conductors, as the motor will have external/internal protections of its own. Generally it is 4:1, but up to 8:1 is code.
It's very likely the grid won't like that load at all. Especially because it's a random burst of load. Just flipping on a 300hp motor randomly is a great way to get unfriendly visits from the power company.
Pretty sure with all the aux diesels running it is supposed to be able to rotate and fire the guns?
@Michael Jackson The Guilty Child Molester - best name ever, and great idea.
Bravo to you Ryan for dispelling another rumor about the 16" guns and their disability. I believe as you do that the Navy would not disable the ships in such a way that they could not be reactivated.
The navy does weird things. Of course they'd have it to keep the turret in place permanently. It's old, antique and extinct.
@@dragonbrownies517 - yet the only ship-based weapon that beats the turret is a missile with a single-use jet engine on it..
The fact is USS New Jersey and the other museum ships are still US Navy property. In a sense they're "loaners" to the various museum organizations that showcase them, so it doesn't make sense that the Navy would permanently cripple them.
It's not likely the NJ will ever be returned to service but you never know, do you?
@@wayneantoniazzi2706 Missiles are nice and all, but there's nothing quite like a large-caliber artillery barrage to completely demoralize and/or destroy any ground formations within range. I still hate that the Army got rid of the 8" M110 howitzers, those things were damned impressive, when you're on the edge of an impact area you can definitely tell the difference between 155s impacting and those monsters. :D The Iowas' 16" rifles could still have a role for shore bombardment, and they were all fitted to launch Tomahawks so could also strike targets far beyond the range of their guns. Plus, with all that armor they're far more likely to survive hits from anti-ship missiles (though the anti-torpedo protection would probably need a huge upgrade).
Didn't Ryan do a video a while back about how reactivating the ship would be such a long, complicated process that it would be cheaper and quicker to build a new ship from scratch? And also the new ship would be way better because... um... new and modern technology?
Great find! I’d be tempted to grind off the plate on one locking assembly just to see if the pin could be withdrawn and reinserted. But that’s just me. 🇺🇸👍🏻
sure thing ;) and when it's out.... well, the engineer in me keeps thinking "if they can draw 1000amps from shore, sure one could figure out some electrical wizzardry to activate the motor at part power without it trying to draw it's full load". would be fun, seeing her rotating her turrets!
@@wolfhalupka8992 Do not bother with the main motor, just use a smaller hydraulic pump to provide pressure. Will slew very slowly, but still within power limits. After all the main power bank had to provide enough flow to move a few hundred tons of gun in conjunction with a gunnery computer to compensate for both the motion of the ship and wave action making it roll, so had to be able to compensate very fast, with high flows.
@@SeanBZA More like nearly 2000 tons of turret.
@@wolfhalupka8992 Also, a 300 horse power (a little more than 200 kW) motor needs MUCH less than 1000 amps at any reasonable voltage. There's something wrong with that calculation. The huge breakers might be for the whole turret, not just the slew motor? Of course the ship's internal electrical system might use different voltage from the shore power?
@@SeanBZA people keep saying this assuming there is a separate electric motor and hydraulic motor with lines connecting them that could be separated and a different pumping system added. typical of what we would see today on modern hydraulic systems.
Based on some footage from other devices on the ship Ryan has refereed to as electro hydraulic . The rotating mechanism may be one gigantic housing electric and hydraulic portions all in one, and if that is the case it’s likely bypassing the motor wouldn’t be possible
I really don’t have the answer, but I don’t think it’s safe to assume that an 80 year old system works just like a modern tractor, and all the same tricks apply.
This is exactly what I like about this channel, the “What’s is Ryan nerding out about today” factor.
After my visits to the Wisconsin and then Texas I ran across an article, at least for Texas, that the turrets had a manual system for rotating their turrets in case of a massive power outage during battle.
Elevation I might believe, but turning it? It'd either have to be super super slow, or have room for 300 men to turn a handcrank
Found another comment from planehogger. It takes the USS Alabama BB-60 6 hours to move the turrets by hand, with a hell of a lot of help by ropes. Not practical to use during battle.
Maybe for the secondary turrets, not the primaries though. Youd never be able to rotate them at anywhere near a useable speed while underway and under fire.
I’d imagine it’s there to rotate the turret back to center line for balance.
@@killergames391 the turrets are balanced in all positions. But in case of damage, you would want some means to return a turret to centerline to get the guns out of the way.
Ryan, the 300 HP electric motor was able to move the turret at 4 degrees per second, who says you need to move the turret at that speed. Move a side the 300 HP motor and install a much lower HP/current motor the turret moves but at a much lower rate. As long as the motor can produce the hydraulic press needed the volume/flow can be less.
pretty much this, even a small hydraulic pack for running hydraulic power tools would five enough pressure, it would just take a long time
absolutely, otherwise if you wished to aim rhe turrents a few degrees off set like HMS Belfast, you could rent a large diesel generator to make the power. or like they said just run the exsisting motor at a lower draw for slower operation, or a newer more efficient motor. if the only physcial barrier is the pins being 'welded' in palce, then you can find solutions for the other problems.
@@Simon-ho6ly like for the Jaws of life, but how much PSI is the Hydaulic system in the turret? Most Portable Hydraulic Generators from firetrucks make 10,000 psi peak. although other larger ones exsist.
@@JPOC226 i cant find a number easily but i imagine it would be sufficient, just slow
I think the issue is the 300 hp electrohydraulic motor is probably inside a heavily armored compartment. by the days of the iowas there was basically no way to hand crank a turret that heavy so you probably armored the hell out of the machinery instead
The motors on the turrets are designed to move the turrets while underway in a heavy seaway. Moored at the dock, in essentially level conditions, the turret motors wouldn't take anywhere *NEAR* their full rated power draw. I'd be willing to bet a case of beer that (after cutting that piece of steel off of that pin) the turrets would move quite nicely on shore power alone.
Part of me wants to see the turrets rotate just for laughs and part of me wants to have it done to stick it to the Navy for the "oh! but the turret welds!" shenanigans.
I mean... even if you did need full power to engage the hydroelectric motor to turn the turrets... You can meet the demand with portable generators and decent electrician work. Wouldn't be pretty and it would just be symbolic (which is the point), but it would work. Hell, more janky things have been done officially in the Navy historically anyways.
@@matchesburn
Well, you'd have to agree that the turrets ARE welded into place, so the navy didn't lie
That the welds are so insignificant, that they can be broken with a good whack of a sledgehammer,... details
shhh they start trying to take your battleship away if you tell them.
This is the sort of video that makes this channel great. It's not big or showy. It's information that can only be found because you guys have an Iowa Class battleship to hand whenever necessary, and you're curious to explore all the things that make Battleship New Jersey what it is.
Edit: And when it comes to making one of the turbo generators operational... it's better to ask for forgiveness from the Navy instead of permission. I mean what are they going to do, confiscate the battleship and ground the entire staff for a week?
"But Admiral So and So said we could check them all...1 at a time, Sir"
Confiscate the battleship, and see who else is interested.
It is very unfair though to others that don't have their own Iowa class battleship...
As for turbo generators - while all that stuff is shut, there is no risk from weapon system because any attempt to start everything in short order would likely fail. However if the ship would have running power grid capable of operating main armament, it is not that difficult to produce shells and powder charges. I think it is better this way, the only option to keep them more operational would be if they were on naval base and with formally navy crew.
They've already been told no. Asking for forgiveness because you did something that you were explicitly told not to do is not going to get you very far. If the Navy had never said anything about reactivating certain systems, and then the museum crew decided to give it a shot, one could make the argument that they were never told no. In this case they clearly been told, in a legal contract, no.
@@bastarddoggy yup I think it would actually lead to quick contract revocation and scrapping of the ships. Any such attempt would need to be agreed in advance.
Absolutely awesome learning all this detail. These ladies, though built for destruction, represent the culmination of 500 years of naval architecture and tecnology and are invaluable pieces of history to show how things were done, with slide rules, drafting tables and welding torches. No school like the old school.
“Could be cut through with a simple Dremel.”
_Looks up local Harbor Freight Stores_
A chisel and a hammer may also work.
There's online documentation from the decommissioning crew and yard workers that NJ had a partially welded jack screw for one of the barrels. The action was stopped and not done on any of the other ships. Dying to know if this is true.
Seems easy enough to plop down in the gun pits and find out.
If that were the case they wouldn't have been able to elevate the barrels when they started the museum in 2001. Which they were able to if you come aboard and see her today, at least on turrets nos 1 and 2. Must be on 3 if anywhere.
@@bradyeverett9225 So the report stated that the welding was just started before someone was able to stop it. It didn't effect the ability to raise the barrels.
This could all be nonsense though...
@@jth877 Military and their secrets.
Some of my favorite videos on your channel are the ones where Ryan himself learns/discovers something new about the ship.
Glad you guys found the weld.
And I'm sure there are ways to power the turrets whithough those generators. It would probably just be super expensive.
a 300 hp diesel excavator with long hydraulic hoses.
Lotsa gerbils on a treadmill!
@@terryboyer1342 - The ship is next to Camdem & Philadephia. I bet there are plenty of rats in both towns, to adequately make that treadmill move the turret. Probably enough to turn the screws to get her going at her rated 33 knots !
@@michaelmoorrees3585 🤣👍And they probably all vote democrat too!
@@terryboyer1342 there's always somebody that has to make everything political. 🤦
Good Morning Mr. Ryan. Your mission is to go where no curator or volunteer has gone before.....
I love all the people in the comments suggesting to get a small motor and turn the turrets! Come on Ryan. You know you want to.
This is why I am here. Getting into the places you can't see when on the ships Tour.
I don't know you would even have to cut that weld to remove the pin. it looks like you could just unbolt that cap and access the pin directly and screw it out from down the the acess.
This wasn't welding to decommission, this was welded so that some dumbo didn't play with the wrong thing. Things like this happened all the time because it's just that extra 5% that takes it from able to be messed with to "special tools required"
also, if it's a threaded pin they may have worried about it backing out if there's a little play in it. over the years if there's any slop, the moving of the water will cause the turret to want to walk that back up and out of the threads. this is basically just a cheap easy way to non-destructively prevent that
Yea, kinda thinking the same thing, but more along the lines of making sure the guns don't rock on the gearing and bearings, wearing them down or breaking them, then to keep then safe from "some dumbo".
It also looks like whoever welded that piece on, couldn't do a decent weld either. Shocking quality of work if I say so myself. 5 minutes with a 4.5inch disc grinder and it would be loose.
@@sirmalus5153 my guess is zero prep and a quick stick weld. It's not made to be a good job, it's made to jam things up and get cut off quickly. I do stuff like that at work when in just putting a clamp on the bench or something like that
@@sirmalus5153 it's don that way so you can easily find and remove the part. If the welding had been done nicer it could have been hard to find the welding during a reactivation
You know I'm in law enforcement and I've heard so many times over the years when I've had an old patrol car people ask if the police engine had been removed and I said of course not. It would make no sense for a law enforcement agency to spend money to remove a part and put some other part in it the battleship is the same way if the Navy were to ever need the ship why would they weld around the barbet to make the gun turrets inoperable. So as Ryan said it is a simple small thing that prevents the turrets from turning and it would be just as easy to reactivate the ship should some catastrophe happen and the Navy would need it again.
Your comment immediately made me think of the Crown Victoria. Like battleships, they're tough cars that can take a lot of abuse and they're built to last. I drive an '87 Crown Victoria, the square bodied "LTD" generation, and after watching Ryan's videos and gaining an interest in battleships, I made a joke to some friends that I had commissioned my car "BB-87. USS Crown Victoria"
@@erikterock9071 the big difference is that the square body had a 5.8L where the others had a 4.6L.
@@erikterock9071 I just got a chuckle reading your comment. I also drive a 1987 Crown Victoria wagon and have in my collection a 1991 Crown Victoria wagon and recently purchased a 1989 Mercury Grand Marquis. Like the battleship's they are durable and built for duration.
@@AugustusTitus Yes, the engines did change. The 1979-1991 police models did indeed have the 5.8. Mine is a civilian model with the 5.0. It's underpowered just enough to be annoying, but as reliable as I could ever ask for.
Besides, anyone who's ever seen _The Blues Brothers_ knows that auctioned-off cop cars still have cop motors, cop tires, and cop shocks.
That's a great bit of detective work finding that piece of angle. It's a crude yet elegant solution to keep the turrets from being moved.
These ships have five steering locations. Surely there's a hand crank to rotate the turrets.
so THAT's how popeye got so jacked, poor basterd
The whole point of the navy putting them in museums was so that, if it became necessary, they could, theoretically, re-commission them. It makes no sense at all that would hard weld the turrets in place at a point that would destroy the mechanisms themselves for future use.
Not really, this was done when they were put to reserve, not museum donation. The potential for them to be mobilized was primarily aimed at by what is and is not allowed contractually, but only to a point and that point is mostly gone because navy got rid of whole lot stuff needed to support them.
Once gone from the property of the state, they're gone. As museum ships (and outside the gov's care) they're no longer usable. They're governed under an agreement plan (as Ryan states) but that's about as far and wide as the reach of the gov goes. Well, maybe if the museum tried to ... i dunno, sell the ship to another country's military... but that might be in the agreement papers as well.
This mod we see here, isn't done for museum deactivation purpose, this is done because it's the cheapest simplest method to stop this turret from turning.
I've seen this thousands of times, if there's an easy way out to stop something from doing something, where the need to keep the mechanism at large in existence is in place, the shortest, easiest path is always taken.
Old buildings, they take the cogs out of the elevator mechanisms. They cut the first floor ladders out. The're doors barred with concrete blocks to stop the door from opening.
Bunkers, they will just cut the wires to the electric motor or drain the hydraulic fluid out of the hydraulic motors. Even saw a bunker where they basically removed the metal link bar from the safety system, so once all but the escape shutter doors were closed, they could never be opened and then poured a concrete plug on top of that final door. Easily reversible.
There's a bunker complex in Italy, they just walled up the main entrance, you can still get inside the old cableways.
@@aserta The Iowa's are special case. Recievers of the ships have to keep a minimal level of maintenence on the ships so they could'theorticly be returned to service of necessary.. That restrction was supposed to end in 2011 when, as the law states asufficent replacemtn system of equal or greater firepaower could realized.The problem, is, the railgun is far from being as ready as they hoped. Hence why Iowa was moved to LA, becuase the curators in SF couldn't afford the minimum maintanence required by the law any more.
Two, while fully decommissioned, are still listed on a reserve list. The other, while not on the reserve list, still must have minimum maintaince so they can be used for parts if the other two are returned to servivce.
The Battleships are the only servicable weapon the navy has that can do close shore support for large scale amphibious landings. Aircraft, while they do surgical strikes, just arent capabable of staying on station and essentailly carpet bombing the shoreline and near shore defenses. Until the railgun system is ready, the Iwoa's are not fully released from the navy by law. They can still be recalled and have to be maintained for that possiblity. No, museum curators do not have carte blanche to do whatever they want with them. The navy is using the museums as simply free long term storage.
"navy putting them in museums was so that, if it became necessary, they could, theoretically, re-commission them."
Like, say, in case of alien invasions where the invaders fire toy-peg-looking shells at ships happen to drop down and challenge both the United States Navy and Hollywood to a game of "Battleship."
@@aserta
"Once gone from the property of the state, they're gone"
Oh man, I got a good laugh out of that one. But, no. Wrong. Read the Defense Production Act Executive Order from 2012 and see what the feds can legally do. If tomorrow fedgov showed up at USS New Jersey and said we're talking it back... there would be no debate. It would happen. Regardless of who "owned" the New Jersey on paper or not or if it was in civilian hands.
To give you an idea, do you know what happened on CV-10 a few years back? USMC personnel showed up, said "let us see your static display F/A-18" and started taking spare parts off of it. And no one was going to stop them, regardless of it the F/A-18 was on loan, civilian owned, leased, whatever. It doesn't matter. Fedgov gets what it wants. Always. Period. Even if they have to trample over you to get it.
IF the pins were removed.there should be a manual gear reduction drive in the turret...on either the south Dakota or NC class such a drive exists..it is like 3 hours to move...same with elevation of the guns. I saw a video of one of the memorial battleships lowering their guns to put the bloomers on...perhaps Massachusetts or Missouri
There most likely is. You can get a glimpse of the gearing that turns the turret in the video that Ryan did about the electric deck.
You can elevate the guns manually, but I don't think you can travese them. Don't think the gear reduction is low enough.
@@ionstorm66 I bet its possible to decouple the hydraulics and then use a block and tackle on the barrels to the deck since its just sitting on rollers
My maternal grandfather Tommy Lamont was a Royal Navy gunner in WW1, invallided out with 'shell shock' and damage to his heart that he carried to his grave in the 1970s.
My uncle, his son, also Tommy Lamont, served on HMS Eagle during the 50s & 60s.
I just caught the videos of battleship USS Missouri firing her 16" guns, and the route in and out of a 16" gun turret on USS Iowa.
I find your videos highly enlightening, in being able to try imagine the conditions that my granda Lamont served under, why the men he served with were such close friends for the rest of their days.
Ships he served on were sunk from under him in multiple WW1 sea battles.
Ryan doesn't sleep until he gets to the bottom of every rumour and question relating to NJ and we're absolutely here for it 😁
Who knew that all you need to stop a 400 ton turret was a pair of booger welds!
I heard somewhere (I think it was this channel) that each of the turrets weighs over 2000 tons.
Most likely the Navy at the time was not happy with retiring the ships, but the good part is they are being kept clean and somewhat repaired for future use if needed
@T.J. Kong They countered the Russian Kirov. The escort ships covered Aegis. VLS was considered by removing 1 or more turrets.
It's so cool that we get to see these hidden areas on the New Jersey, places that probably only a handful of people have ever seen in the ship's lifetime!
Always interesting. Thanks.
You always come up with new and interesting topics for this channel, excellent job!!!
As I like to say, "If it looks stupid but it works, then it ain't stupid."
So cool that you always are on the quest for more knowledge about your artifact. Awesome
Shore power is intended to provide "Hotel Services" to allow crew to live onboard pierside while the plant is shut down. There should be enough excess capacity past that point to allow powering the minimum required to light off 1 boiler. The general plan is that you use shore power to bring up one boiler, allowing you to bring up a Turbine Generator. Once that TG is up, you have enough power to start bringing up the rest of the plant.
That said, how you checked the rated outputs of the Emergency Diesel Generators? Any one of them should be adequate to bring up a boiler, and I'd be surprised if there wasn't enough power to operate at least 1 turret and support equipment. (They should all have breakers/bus ties on the main board)
"There is no way for a battleship to rotate their turrets" Go ahead and ask that to iowa ryan.
I'm sure the answer is "we have no idea" but surely there has to be some sort of manual backup to rotate the turret in a severe emergency right? Like a wheel or screw with some super crazy gear ratio. Like say the ship took severe damage in battle lost all power and had to be towed to port, but the turrets were blocking entry into port or something. The navy definitely had some sort of backup to prevent this kind of situation.
Yes. It's called removing the turret with a barge crane. If the ship lost all power (like SoDak, but on a more permanent basis) then aux power would be supplied by an assisting ship, which the turret motor would run off of. If the turret motor is wrecked in such a way that it can't be repaired in situ, WITHOUT wrecking the rest of the traverse mechanism somehow (maybe an electrical fire?) then the would have to pull the turret. Each turret weighs ~3000 tons. Manual operation of the turret, no matter how many reduction gears you add, is not possible. It is just too heavy.
@@michaelwanamaker9829 Would the emergency generators be able to provide enough to run the motor in a lower gear?
Furthermore, didn't each turret have its own emergency generator?
@@calenedgar3722 I’m sure he’s talked about the power capacity of the emergency diesel generators, but I’m also sure that they can’t provide 1800 A of current. As far as centering the guns, you might be able to use a tug and the barrels as a lever.
@@dcviper985 ship has a paid of 250KW generators. A single turret draws more power than that total. It would not be practical to operate the turrets if the main power was down, you would need power for other more important things like DC.
USS Texas literally has a room where guys can pull the turret with chains and pulleys to turn it in an emergency. They posted a video showing it.
This was one of my favorite videos ever. Thank you Ryan!!
Really excellent content Ryan & Libby. Much appreciated and keep up the great work!
Is there any "back up" to moving the turrets like there is for manually turning the rudders??? Like 2,000 turns of a crank to move the turret 3 degrees?
There are on the 5”
There's spare motors... also pumping the hydraulic fluid. No matter what redundant traverse motors you use, you're still gonna be pulling 1.8kA from something. If the spare diesel generators in the keel's void space, or the turbines aren't producing power, you have much bigger issues than "we can't turn the turret" ;)
There is but it's painfully slow. Probably designed to get the turrets centered and locked in place for the trip back to the yard to fix things.
In older ships there would likely have been a solution that allowed crew to turn turrets mechanically but as electrical and hydraulic systems became more reliable this would have become increasingly redundant (and pointless due to the sheer inertia of the turret and increase in requisite manpower)
There were battery banks within the turrets to power the turrets if ship power was lost, but I think that's it
Enjoy your travels. I wish that I had a cool job that gave me business trips like the ones you get.
Excellent video. Thanks for making it! In these days & times it's good to know that if needed the ship could go active again.
I love these explorations, tinkering around, digging through random places and finding all the stuff needed.
"Give me a lever long enough and a fulcrum on which to place it, and I shall move the world." - Archimedes. There is almost certainly a manual mechanism to rotate the turrets, likely at a glacial pace. Would be a fun hours-long exercise for some volunteers and would make a high view count video if you wanted to investigate and give it a try.
Given the way things were done in the Navy back in the '40s, I assume the "mechanism" was, in fact, several hundred young men with no latitude to refuse instructions, however absurd. :)
That is way more than a 300HP motor should draw. I suggest you look at the nameplate. If it is sevuced at 460V it should have a full load Amos rating of something like 400 amps. The breaker may be that rating to allow it not to trip on the starting inrush current of the motor.
Starting amps are about 6 times what the running amps are.
That's called the interrupting rating of a fuse/breaker and I think you're probably right. I think max locked rotor would still be under 2500A on a 300hp motor...
@@ghost307 Yes, and a properly functioning breaker should allow that through. A breaker can trip either magnetically, which protects from short circuits, or thermally, which protects it from sustained overloads. Motor inrush current shouldn't be high enough to trip a breaker magnetically or sustained for long enough to trip it thermally.
It's great that your ship is a day to day learning experience always ready to give up it's secrets if you go looking
Thank you for this video.
A quick fix if they ever do reactivate the ship. A few minutes of grinding and the pins can be removed. And you can tell the Navy was thinking ahead with how well moving parts are greased. I doubt they welded anything other than those pins. It took how many years to find those welds? That shows thought and ease of use
I’d love to see the 16” guns elevated and trained…preferably(?) not on Philadelphia, though! It’s not impossible; there’s a air museum that moves their Concorde’s nose/visor to the take off and landing positions. Pleeeease….?
As a Pittsburgher; I insist that the guns be trained in the general direction of Philly at least once a month!! Also I believe youre thinking of the Imperial War Museum in Duxford. They have a great youtube channel going over all of their planes.
Very cool! Thanks for doing this video and research!
Amazing find unbelievably awesome.
If you really wanted to move your turrets to pose them for whatever purpose, you would need to bring a generator on board (could be rented) and feed power directly to the turret swing controls. Your local United Rentals could find you the right size generator.
So to summarize.... they TECHNICALLY are welded in place..... but not to the extent that everyone thought.
In summary, a 19 year old mechanic was told "We need to render this inoperable" and he said "I can handle it"
Ryan I am extremely impressed at what you and your crew will do to get access to some of the smallest areas of the ship! And allow us to gain greater knowledge of little or not so little intricacies that would not be available otherwise. Thank you so much
Another great video from the battleship. Thanks
You'd think something like that would be in owner's manual.....you do get an owner's manual when you buy a battleship, right?
Can we see that 1800A breaker for the turret motor?
Wow. This is such an amazing behind the scenes video. Thank you Ryan for your work. It’s absolutely amazing to see someone exploring such an incredible piece of history with such knowledge and passion. Found this channel a few years ago and have been hooked ever since. My dad was an Air Force fighter pilot but my grandfather was a Navy medic. Thank you for keeping this piece of history alive.
Excellent and very interesting video Ryan!
That looks like your industry standard cheapest fastest option to "weld it in place".
Yup, but that’s sort of what you’d want as part of your efforts to mothball a ship. Your modifications should be the minimum necessary to make the ship ready for long-term storage, while simultaneously as easy to reverse as you can make them. The pin is already doing the hard work of keeping the turret from rotating. All you need is to keep someone from mistakingly raising the pin.
Do the Iowas have a mechanical backup for any of the turret systems? Texas has the chain falls, then again, Texas also has backup steering after the electric and steam steering systems; I think we recently established that the Iowas have a mechanical adjustment, but not full rudder travel without the powered systems.
They do, but they're far too slow to be of any use in a combat situation.
@@ghost307So then the museum could turn the turrets without energizing the motors if they really wanted to, but probably not on any regular basis such as they do for some of their other equipment.
Ive watched ALL of the videos on this channel. I really didnt think you had anything cool left to tell me... but this video proves I was very wrong. This might have been the coolest video Ive seen. Very interesting info and I love that you guys just figured out this mystery too. Awesome work and thanks for opening the floor for us to see! I love this channel. No other warship youtube channel does it better... and after I found you guys I looked hard... you guys make the best content in the game.
The channel needs a "Ryan gets inside cramped places" playlist.
Interesting, cool information. To show American pride and heritage I still wish the Navy would have kept one Iowa class Battleship in service, and made a fleet with it like they do with the aircraft carriers. Maybe like with a smaller pocket carrier and ships.
The cost would be astronomical. The US navy can't even afford to operate the ships that it needs, let alone one that would only be ceremonial. And the US has the world's largest defense budget by a significant margin.
@@B52Stratofortress1 Depends on what your "needs" are.
@@tedmoss I should clarify, the ships that the Americans think that they need.
Ryan you give up too easily. Whatever turns or rotates under power almost always has a manual wheel to operate the thing when power is lost. emergency steering for example, yes it takes several thousands manual turns on the wheel to move it, but its there. The turrets must have a manual rotation gear in there somewhere.
Or find away to lower the amount of amperage the motor draws. Imagine letting people pay to operate the forward gun turret. Just install sensors and a computer to limit the movement allowed and a button for emergency stop.
Yeah or lift an external generator aboard or use a high current motor controller. Could almost certainly get it to move somehow.
@@ThePTBRULES Yeah, I mean it takes a lot of power to turn the turret fast , if you reduce the speed, this also reduces the power needed. Of course the question is if it is possible to reduce the speed without heavily modifying anything.
@@ThePTBRULES Keep in mind the breakers are only for extreme overcurrent and to prevent the wiring from catching on fire. It's not what the motor is rated at.
You can convert horsepower to kW. 300hp is 223.71kW. W=A*V. Assuming a 450V motor, that’s 497.133A. However, given the amperage of the breaker mentioned, it is probably a 125V motor as that would draw 1789.68A.
Wikipedia mentions that the SSTG’s provide 450V power. Based on my experience in the Navy, shore power is supplied at the same voltage as the generators. This means that the 1200A shore power breaker can provide 540kW of power. Over double what the turret needs to spin.
So, yes. They can rotate A SINGLE turret on shore power easily.
I rarely write comments.. But I wanted to say how awesome I think you are with these. I love seeing things on military equip. that we normally wouldnt see. Semper Fi !
Wow, this is highly valuable information! Splendid video.
How about the 5” turrets? Do they rotate?
Does this count as a research breakthrough? It pretty definitively puts one of the longest-running myths about these ships to rest, so I feel like this counts as a research breakthrough.
Great job and very intreresting.
Love your information and complete explanation, I love restoring antique buses, and trains. When I see the paint chips I just want to run for a sweeper and clean it and paint it, of course taking safety in mind with the old paint, but there is nothing like bringing something old back to work, it's fulfilling and fun.
Didn't you guys do this one already?
We have new info! This is a follow up
@@BattleshipNewJersey Do they move now? Because in the last one they (spoiler alert) didn't, but were capable of movement.
@@BattleshipNewJersey You mean you folks went crawling under the shelf plate without me?
Happy to see another video guys. Thank you.
@@BattleshipNewJersey so... Now that Iowa has turned one of its turrets, how long does it take for you guys to make it work? I specifically want to see Ryan dremeling the welded pieces of iron off, that hold the locking pins in place😂 After an hour or so you should hand him the angle grinder over.😜
But Watt if the aliens come?!?
That's pretty loud! Lol
Then we use other systems, like ICBMs, ground-based AA, or even an old Starship with a 150 ton nuclear bomb.
Great Video. It is interesting how you still find out things about your "own" museum ship. It is also intersting how this kind of misunderstanding can be created and then be accepted fact.
Great investigation
Awesome video!!! Fascinating information on how this was done and a great look at the practicality of it being quickly undone if needed. Shame about not being able to rotate the turrets. It'd be awesome to see.
Great job good information 🇺🇸
Very interesting! Thanks
Awesome video! Very informative!
Love this channel….miss my grandpa. I watch every video “with him”…
Nice job. Thanks.
I will sleep better tonight knowing this. Thank you
great episode!!
Great job!
Your videos will be referenced for the next 200 years or however long they have to maintain that ship. amazing knowledge!!
Thank you Ryan, his is another great video.
Great detective work!
great detective work!
Fascinating stuff! ❤️
Excellent content! Love these crawl-around videos... more like Tom Scott's. Keep it up!
Great job 👏
I am glad to see you send some folks over to Tom's channel.
Very informative video.
Very cool episode!
Ryan very nice history investigation and well explained