A Short History of Drydock 3 at the Philadelphia Navy Yard
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- เผยแพร่เมื่อ 16 ก.ย. 2024
- In this episode we're talking about the drydock the battleship is in.
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The views and opinions expressed in this video are those of the content creator only and may not reflect the views and opinions of the Battleship New Jersey Museum & Memorial, the Home Port Alliance for the USS New Jersey, Inc., its staff, crew, or others. The research presented herein represents the most up-to-date scholarship available to us at the time of filming, but our understanding of the past is constantly evolving. This video is made for entertainment purposes only.
I’m a fan of using curator as a standard unit of measurement.
For those that are curious, one curator is 72"x19".
@@Ken_Koonz Actually 72"x16" as he can crawl through a 16" gun barrel.
@@johnnyc6489 Sure, if he squeezes. It is not like he just slid through it easily.
The "wings" on the graving dock foundation essentially make it an upside-down arch, so it's resisting upward water pressure not just with the weight of itself and the drydock, but also adjcent soil and structure, like an arch dam supported by adjacent canyon walls.
Hey Ryan, I was the kid with the big hair and spitfire shirt who showed up awhile ago. I’d love to learn about the pump house for dewatering the dry dock and the large crane on site.
Yes! I have also been asking about the dewatering system. I hope he’ll cover that in a future video.
Heck, I bet they could do an entire video on the history of the crane and rail systems.
Yes, pumps please!
I'm always amazed at the steady stream of content you guys come up with.
Me ,my brother & 3 uncles all served in the Army but was never that interested in anything dealing with the Navy until I got hooked on Ryan's over 600 interesting & very informative U Tube vidios.
I like the "curator" for a unit of length measurement.
"Here's Mars-guy for measurement."
My ship, USS Biddle underwent overhaul there in 1980. The USS Lexington was in the dry dock next door. My brother was stationed on her at the time. Had some good times in and around Philly.
Were you ships company during the overhaul? I’ve always wondered what happens to the crew during a major overhaul / refit cycle when a ship spends an extended time in dry dock. I assume you’re housed elsewhere and assigned other duties?
@@cruisinguy6024 half of the crew went on a floating barracks barge and the other half went to the barracks on base and we rotated. We stood watches on the ship and the floating barracks. We did maintenance on our berthing compartment and our work spaces… CIC in my case. A lot of chipping and painting on the upper decks.
Ryan is a hugely popular TH-camr, but he will occasionally answer your questions. He has tens of thousands of questions every day so don't feel bad if he doesn't answer right away. He'll get to it.
It’s Amazing what are Grandparents were capable of doing
Concrete floats! US made 12 of them around the early 1900s. The SS Arlantus still beached off Cape May. I wish we could do a segment on that.
The wreck is almost completely below the water at high tide now. If you want to see it without paddling out there, you have to do it soon
It's gonna be so weird when we don't get any drydock videos anymore.
This is peak content
What a great educational video, thank you Ryan. 30+ years ago I used to fly into Philly 6-8 times per year and always marvelled at the Naval Yards. Unfortunately for me battleship New Jersey did not live at Camden then. I still live in hope that I may be able to get from Australia to see her one day.
Loved the information in this video. It must have been quite a sight to see something so large being built.
I am always amazed at the engineering feats that were made from so many years ago. Before computers, before the highly advanced technology in equipment and construction techniques that we have today. Seeing the videos of BB62 in dry dock, it seems that the dry dock is long overdue for some love and tlc, and deserves some rehab work. If it's not already, dry dock 3 should be listed as a historical place.
6:19 three and a half curators tall, damn. That's thick!
pretty cool information. i like the shots of the empty dry dock. hard to visualize it with 50,000 tons of metal sitting in the middle of it lol
Was that the shadow of Libby? I love the history of structures like this. The long range planning and engineering was brilliant as evidenced that it is still in use today. My local yard is still using a WWII wartime expedient, a concrete floating dry dock that has long outlasted its expected lifetime.
Interesting history , it's a strange feeling looking up and realising how far below ground level you actually are .Many of our docks and locks are older and it's surprising , or perhaps not that No3 dock looks so familiar . As Ryan said for the initial investment the return in making incredibly expensive ships available for service has been well worth it .
Thank you! Someone behind the NJs channel must have gotten tired of my posts asking about the dry dock as Ryan addressed many of the questions I’ve had. I had assumed, based on my limited knowledge of large construction in this area, that the dry dock would need pilings down to bedrock and was pleasantly surprised to learn I was wrong - and that the foundation was over 3 curators thick!
My remaining questions are about the technical details behind the dewatering system. I assume there’s massive electrical pumps and would love to hear about that as well as the flooding mechanisms (which I assume bypass the pumps and are powered strictly by hydrostatic pressure from the river)
I so wish I was able to make one of the dry dock tours and I have no doubt this will be one of the greatest regrets I’ll have. 😢
So interesting Ryan - 20 feet of concrete!
As a comparison i believe the U-Boat pens built by the Germans were 10 METRES of concrete in the roof's.
Basically the foundation under drydock 3 is an inverted arch where upwards hydro-static pressure transfers the load to the side walls and beyond, clever.
It might be nice to have a small display/summary of the drydock history added to your museum as a sort of supplement, to tie in to the battleship's overall history.
The wings have hydro static pressure top an bottom so they equalize each other. Therefore the weight of the concrete wings acts fully downwards so they form a more effective anchor.
The difference in height between top and bottom creates a difference in hydrostatic pressure. So there is still some buoyancy. It's just not as much as having air on the top.
actually probably more top pressure as dirt is heavier than water, which is better for stability. i would have expected pilings under it though .
The wings are concrete at 145 pounds per cubic foot, displacing water at 62 pounds per cubic foot, so the net weight downwards is 83 pounds per cubic foot. The biggest benefit of the wings is you get to count on the dirt above the wings of nearly 50' height at another 110-120 pounds per cubic foot. There is a lot of weight pushing down on those wings.
(un)Fun Fact:
If the Delaware floods or a storm surge pushes a tide above the wing wall, they'd have to counter-flood the drydock (and whatever's inside) to stop it floating out of the soil 😮
@@FaustoTheBoozehound Not exactly a fun fact if you own a drydock but I'll suggest that it is incorrect unless you have done the buoyancy calculations yourself as I did.
I don't know for sure, how to pour that much concrete, but I know it isn't easy. It may have been a continuous pour, even if it wasn't, the concrete was most likely made on site, everything brought in by rail lines, using 2 batching plants, one on each side. Curing concrete is a chemical reaction that gives off heat, which would have been high enough to cause cracks, unless they cooled the slab internally, like pouring a dam.
A lot of dams were poured in interlocking cubes, like Legos. Probably similar here.
I could tell the Drydock was old when I was there but damn. I hope they do some fixing up of that drydock once New Jersy is finished.
If you expand the footing, the mat slab, wider than the walls then you get the weight of the walls pushing down on the slab to counteract buoyancy but you also get the weight of any dirt that might be behind the walls pushing down on the mat slab. With 20' of concrete and maximum water differential of maybe 45' you still have enough hydrostatic pressure to push up on the mat and float it if you couldn't count on the weight of the walls too.
Another issue with digging a hold and building 50' tall walls around it is you have a whole lot of soil pressure pushing against the walls and nothing at the top to brace them. I suspect with drydocks side by side they may have connected the walls of adjacent drydocks so would pull against each other. Other than actually digging a 65' deep hole right next to a river and keeping the water out, building concrete walls that tall to resist soil pressure is the most amazing part of the drydock construction.
The ship being almost 900 feet long I'll take a wild guess that the area containing keel blocks is roughly 50,000 square feet. With the ship at maybe 40,000 tons that is less than one ton per square foot. The 20' of concrete under that weighs about a ton and a half so you are adding a substantial weight to the mat slab but not as much as it might seem. And that amount of pressure under the mat slab could be an issue if the mud adjacent to the river was relatively soft.
Thanks for doing the math!
Well done on fresh information 🤠
I never even considered how the dry dock was built - but now I’m super impressed.
Oh we're doing concrete in Curator units now! How many cubic Curators of concrete was needed to build the drydock?
A cubic curator is just under 8 cubic yards by my reckoning 😂
What an absolute unit
Was great getting out to see it over Memorial Day weekend. Quite staggering seeing everything in person!
Have to dust off my rule to see if the chain that's supporting about a dozen 4 ounce LED lamps is heavy enough. Never heard of a 21' thick concrete pour but somebody know what they were doing to still be in good shape 103 years later. My first job we had a retired Navy engineer in charge of our maintenance shop. Guy could figure just about anything dealing with electrical, plumbing, refrigeration, etc.
She 100 plus years and still in use. That called craftsmanship.
She's, that's.
Called English.
Special appearance by Libby's shadow.
This guy is a content monster. TH-cam algorithms dream:) No pun intended.
Im not sure, did we have the history of the cranes? Cause the cranes that put the big gun pods in had to be way more bad ass than the modern container crane counterparts.. I can even imagine cranes like that in those times ran on steam?:)
the dampening of the earthquake is much more related to the fact that she is being literally shock-absorbed by the mud and less that the concrete dampens out any of the vibration. Similar to how you won't feel a quake on a ship.
Interesting facts about the different dry docks. 👍
Man, people sure are smart to be able to figure out how to do this kinda thing.
I think it would cost more to build the NJ than $2 billion today. A recent contract for 10 flight 3 Burke destroyers is $14.5 billion or $1.45 billion each. When you consider the making of the guns, turrets and armor plate, overall cost has to be several billions. More on the order of a carrier. The Burks are much easier to build. Gas turbines use much less plumbing, no boilers, and the ship is just special plate, beams, and a lot of welding. The electronics, radar, and VLS require more wiring, but easier than steam piping. Besides the navy, I worked at 4 naval shipyards on ships of the time.
Love your talks Ryan about the US ships I'm an Australian and we always look up to our big brother the USA
Very informative information Ryan, thank you.
Love these informative videos, i would never have guessed that the drydock was so thick.
Thanks for the Dry dock history Ryan.
The graving dock for the Australian Navy fleet in Sydney (the East and West coast are both called Garden Island - maybe you confuse the enemy?) was built in the gap between an island and the mainland to turn it into a peninsula!
How they dewater a dry dock. I always wondered how they do it.
My ship, USS Joseph Hewes (FF 1078), did a Docking Selected Restricted Overhaul (DSRA) at Philly in 1990. It may have been Drydock #3 as she seemed tiny compared to the dock.
Greetings, shipmate from a different decade! I was in Aux 1 on the Joey Boat in the early '80s. Just so happens I was the MMC for 4MMR on the Kitty Hawk in SLEP when y'all were there. Came over and rousted the duty MM to pop down through my "coming of age" stomping grounds. Still had the personnel logbook in Aux 1 with me in there as an MMFN.
@@seafodder6129 Greetings!
Ok - 5 of 8 Forrestal and Kitty Hawk "super-carriers" got their "Service Live Extension" at Philly - between 1982 and 1993. Looking At Wikipedia - I will guess that was in DD #4 or 5 - slightly bigger and newer. Checking the 3 Midway class - Wikipedia has me thinking they never Philly while active. So where is this location?- he never says - I suspect at the 40 mm tub at the stern of the ship.
You are correct, Ryan is standing in the starboard aft 40mm gun tub.
Over on the website navsource, which has photos of all kinds US warships, there’s a picture of the Forrestal in dry dock #5. Dry Docks #4 & #5 at the Philadelphia Naval Shipyard, Dry Docks #5 & #6 at the Brooklyn Naval Shipyard, and Dry Dock #8 at the Norfolk Naval Shipyard are all of the same design and dimensions and were originally constructed with the intention of using them in the erection of the Montana-class battleships. They were so large and heavy that utilizing the traditional inclined slipway method, the manner in which all prior US battleships had been built, was no longer seen as feasible. While never being used for their original purpose, they were all used to construct aircraft carriers, amongst other vessels. Postwar Brooklyn’s two dry docks were used to construct the Saratoga CV-60, Independence CV-62 & Constellation CV-64. As you mentioned Philadelphia’s two dry docks performed the SLEP on the Forrestals & Kitty Hawk. To this day Norfolk’s Dry Dock #8 is still used to dry dock the Navy’s Nimitz-class carriers & will dry dock the Ford’s as well after refurbishment and modernization.
I sure do like your delivery of information. Very interesting. How is it you know so much? Did you serve? Really enjoy
Can you show us the pump room?
Yes please!
It is mind blowing what millions of people can build.
forgive me if you've already answered this question
what would the cost to build an Iowa be today. not just adjust for inflation statistics, but actually based on some similar ship technologies and costs, what would it be. im guessing we'll over $5b to make a contemporary iowa today
The closest comparison in the modern navy in terms of size and tonnage would be the America Class amphibious assault ships and they’re about $3.6 billion/ea. They’re almost the exact same length, width, and displacement.
Of course a modern Iowa wouldn’t be the same as a WW2 battleship as modern weapons and technology would call for a drastically different ship. For example, there’s probably not much point in building an armored citadel in the same sense that battleships had.
Anyways, IF a class of modern guided missile battleships were ordered (lots of VLS tubes and perhaps 2 3-gun turrets) my guess would be about $4 billion/ea for a class of 4. If they were to be nuclear powered the cost would be significantly higher.
Thanks!
Peace and long life
(un)Fun Fact:
If the river floods and reaches the height of the wing walls, they'd have to counter-flood the drydock (and whatever's inside) to prevent it from floating out of the soil 😮
As amazing thick as the drydock foundation is, the concrete roof of the WWII U-boat pens in St. Nazaire is thicker still at 29 ft.
How long does it take to flood the drydock, then drain it again?
Ryan, Did you find out about the depth of the Dry Dock floor depth today 5/28 or previously. The Gentleman who gave us the tour on Monday 5/27 told some of us about the depth of 20' thick concrete floor. Now that's alot of weight and concrete. Do the math of a cubic yard being 3'x3'x3' then multiplying the depth of the drydock 20'x the length (around1000') by the width ( around 140' at the bottom). Do the math and a typical concrete truck holds 12-14 cubic yards. ( was probably a continuous pour too). WOW. Done in the 1920's.
Rough calculation is around 75k yards of concrete just for the floor.
A typical 1920s truck would have held far less concrete than a modern one.
They almost certainly had a batch plant on site and poured without the need of trucks.
IIRC, concrete trucks didn’t come out until after WW2. I believe that concrete would have been mixed by hand.
I know that I'm just using it as a comparison. also when I was a kid watching a highway being built 2 blocks from our house they didn't use traditional concrete mixers. the mix came to the job as a dry mix in dump trucks, then dumped into a portable tracked mixer with a water truck attatched and then loaded into a bucket after mixed and dumped. The traditional mixers the ( Early 60's) held around 5-7 cubic yards.
The Panama Canal was built shortly before this, and the lessons were applied to many subsequent projects. There would have been several batch plants, and skyways across the chamber area to move concrete buckets to where they would be dumped. Look for the book "Rails To The Diggings" for many great Panama photos and descriptions.
so far the drydock has cost $160 / day for evry day in existence, not counting maintenance and operating cost. so like a decent hotel room.
Pumps please!
The dry dock walls look like they’re gonna crumble???
Maybe you've answered this before. I've watched ship launch videos. How was the New Jersey launched? Is there film? I always thought something that big would be built in a dry dock and floated out. Thanks for the videos.
When we discuss the slipway in this video you can see a brief clip of her launch. She's launched stern first into the Delaware.
Crazy how the dry dock outlasted the company that built it
Drydock 3? Only 296 behind Drach!
😂😂😂😂😂
Ryan you missed a very important point- how long into the future is the dry dock expected to last?
Has anyone built an above water graving dock? Basically a lock like structures that allow floating a ship up above water level before moving it over blocks? This would result in a much larger system (it would double the length and require about twice as much "door") but in compensation, it would be dry by default (giving most of the advantage of building on slipways like avoiding the need for continual pumping when not moving ships) and keep the floor above the water table which could improve the reliability of the foundation. In partial compensation for the size, the lifting section could be used as a normal graving dock while the above water section is working on another project.
I'm guessing such a system, if they have ever been built are rare because of only limited number of location where that could offer a beneficial takeoff. (You would likely still want to build it into the ground, preferably into rock) which would require rather steep geography when everything else in a shipyard would prefer flat ground.
Port Weller Shipbuilding at the north end of the Welland Canal has something similar, a deep drydock with a shallower "shelf dock" built to the side. You place a shallow draft vessel on the shelf dock, then bring in a second one to the main drydock. But both parts have floors well below water level.
How do I contact the media department
You're selling tickets for a drydock tour through the 8th. Will we not be able to walk underneath on that date?
Try to get approval for people to be onboard during the tow back to your mooring. I’d happily fly the few thousand miles to get to ride on the battleship while “underway” (not the same as if she were under her own power, but a) that’s never going to happen again and b) Americans at least can always join the Navy and get on an aircraft carrier).
When you fleet the ship, do you have to fully refill the dry dock, or can you just flood it enough to float the ship?
It’s narrower at the top? It looks wider at the top.
So cool! Wow!
No-no-no, it's WET, and then DRY!
⚓️
Ryan, what state were you born in?
What if they had built the Montana class? Would new dry-docks have to be built?
They probably would have used Dry Docks 4 or 5. They’re big enough for the Forrestal and Kitty Hawk class carriers.
If concrete does not float very well, how did they make liberty ships from concrete?
There is a lot of air inside the ship.
Is it scary to crawl under the ship?
That spot on the ship doesn't look too good...
They are lucky that the dry docks still exist in Philadelphia not like Long Beach that the city wanted the shipyard and base to make a container terminal. On the container terminal there are still signs of the old dry docks. Also I know they do aircraft carriers there but not nuclear.
It's a complicated relationship for sure. Once cities get sufficiently large, much of the infrastructure and industry that helped them grow can be seen as being in the way of further growth. And likewise sometimes even if the infrastructure could still be usable, that doesn't necessarily mean that it's actually being used effectively, that it's actually _useful._
It's also complicated by the ever-growing size of ships. On Wikipedia's entry on the Long Beach Navy Shipyard, USS _Ranger_ is in the big drydock. The ship is 326m long, the drydock is 333m long, and it looks like some kinds of work might be difficult. And that's for a ship class that started construction in 1952.
There are fifteen American drydocks larger than Philadelphia #3, but only ten that can handle the current crop of aircraft carriers. But there are a fairly large number of drydocks that can handle the amphibious assault ships. So it seems to be a complicated situation. the Nimitzes might fit in the 333m drydocks but the Fords definitely will not. In contrast there are thirteen drydocks that can accommodate an amphibious assault ship (including this one) but there are only thirteen (9 of active America/Wasp, two reserves of Tarawa) of a class that would require drydocks this big.
So the US seems to have more drydocks than it needs in these sizes. If they can't renovate them to make them longer/larger due to problems with real estate or geology then it makes sense to part with them, particularly if private industry can either use them for commercial ship repair or if the real estate is useful for other purposes.
Are there any concerns that when you flood the dry dock to move the ship to finish painting that the salt or brackish water will have an effect on the curing of the part of the ship that was already painted and will be below the water line?
😁😁😁
2nd, 28 May 2024
What holds the river back during the construction of the drydock ?.
Done today it would probably be a temporary cofferdam made of driven sheet piles.
Back in the 1920s, it was likely a clay dam built out in the river that was dug up when the dock was completed.