SUBMARINEMUSEUMS.ORG Forum
Individual Submarine Boards => USS Batfish (SS-310) => Topic started by: Mark Sarsfield on April 10, 2008, 11:09:12 AM
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What is the status on getting the torpedoes from WA? Chris said that he's still waiting for the green light from you guys to pick them up for delivery.
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I will check. The last I heard was that they were waiting for delivery of the chocks. Paid for by the Foundation
I will post on this soon.
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Bump.
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just got word from Gil. The chocks are on their way. Once they arrive we can arrange for transportation. I do not have a time frame on this yet. The Sub vets are planning a work party in OCT. It would be nice to have the deck in place by then and then all that they have to worry about is the torpedos.
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Agreed. Between the reenactors, the Creek students, and other help I woud think that most or all of the deck would be completed by the fall. Speaking of deck, have we determined from photos where we want to re-install access hatches in the deck?
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I am not going to worry about acess hatch placement changes unless we have hard evedince to change. The hatches that are there now provide access to critical area. We have talked about restoring the original steal deck forward of the escape trunk. I am not againd toing that. We will need steal to do this however. We also have a lot of restoration that needs to be done to the supperstructior. The imediate sutuff can occur after the deck is layed...
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Another bump. Shippers wanted to know how the torpedo chocks are coming along and if any target date may be set, yet.
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We are looking at October time fram to have them installed. that will depend on hw the deck project goes over the summern..
Rick
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Rick,
You probably saw the emails this week, but the torpedoes are ready for pick-up. Send Chris your intentions (whether we're still waiting for October or if that date has been moved forward/backward).
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Already taken care of. I would really like to get these here ASAP. That way they are here and ready for Gil to take care of....
Rick
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Somebody have a spare torpedo? We could use one in our Veterans Park in Hamilton New Jersey. We're the only branch not covered by any memorial in this park.
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I understand your torps have arrived. Can you take a few pics of them and post them up?
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Yes, they are there as Rick pointed them out. I was going to take a picture after our deck work today, but my wife started feeling sick so we packed up and left and only after I got home realized that I didn't take the photos. Maybe Rick and snap a few photos.
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I will do what I can. As you are all aware, I am having some Technoligy issues over here.
If only I had a good cloneing machine. :uglystupid2:
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Hey fellas, thanks for the nice letter of appreciation you sent me for assisting the Batfish in getting her long lost torpedoes back were the belong. It was my pleasure and I'm glad all worked out for the volunteers and the Batfish. I will frame it and mount it on my office wall.
Chris Gossweiler
USS Torsk Volunteer
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I'll get photos next Saturday as I finally get to go back down to the sub.
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Here are photo's of our new torpedoes.
Mark A.
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What Mod # is your 27? Ours are Mod 4 manuf 1954. Yours makes 15 that I have found, these are rare.
Tom Bowser
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Yeah. It's nice that we got one. It will introduce the fact to the public that acoustic torpedoes had their beginnings during the war. We don't have any mounting rails in the rear torpedo room. So, Rick said that his initial plan to is to put in on chocks on the floor like you see it in the photos.
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We have found that the MK 27 is a bitch to load in the tube. There must have been a different set of rollors on the skids and for in the tubes because it sure doesn't roll on what we have. A couple of the boats have a different rollar assembly just before the tube and that maybe what was used. The Torsk sank the last two Japanese Destroyers at the end of the war using these.
Tom Bowser
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We have the Mk 27 and the Mk 37 onboard along with the Mk 45 Nuke weapon, the Mk 37 in Tube #7 (The tube that shot the last weapon in WWII) is going to back hauled in a couple of months and a different weapon put in it's place (I think another Mk 45) our mine tables do have rollers on them to help ease with loading the weapons, with our FTR we have to pull our ladder out to load a weapon into tube #2 and then there is a lot of adjustments that have to be made to get the weapon to go in because over time the rollers are no longer aligned from what I have been told and it is a nasty dirty job to get them realigned.. we used to check alignment every time we went into the yards for overhaul or SRP(Selected Reuitilization Plan aka mini overhaul) rarely did we have to do anything other then check the boresight to verify ours were still aligned.
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The Mark 27 Cutie was a very valuable weapon in the last year of the war... saving the bacon of many US subs. It doesn't roll in the tube well? Could this be a result of the fact that they were intended to swim out of the tubes? Suggestion for TORSK, since the Cutie (the second to the last torpedo you fired at the Coastal Defense Vessel, not really a DD) was fired from that tube, why not put one in said tube?
As for the Cutie itself, the orange head is a color used after about 1960. The exercise heads for COD's focus date of 1952 were yellow, so we removed the orange and used yellow when it had to be restored. It looks like the Cutie has the "as-built" exercise head. This was too expensive for the Navy to order all they needed. So the USN decided to take the explosives out of standard warheads and back fill them with a plaster-like mix for ballast. If your exercise head has this mix as ballast, REMOVE IT!!! It holds moisutre and eventually your beautiful exercise head bubbles up with rust from below! It nearly destroyed our head, but an autobody repair shop was able to do wonders in restoring it ($500, even with a generous discount). Our war/exercise head lacks the cast-in ring on the top and has an open plug for the detonator. Your cutie looks to be in good shape, and that brown coating is tough to replicate if it is lost.
PF
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Paul,
we are going to be removing the 27 out of tube #7 (which sank the last Japanese warship in WWII) and then replacing it with another weapon, a big thing you have to remember when trying to tube load weapons in tubes that haven't been maintained for many years is that the rollers inside of the tubes have to be greased and made to roll freely prior to the loading and may or may not be out of alignment so it makes it even harder to load them. Then you get more fun if there is an up angle on that side of the boat instead of a down angle, loading weapons is not a fun job on these boats and the LA's had hydraulics on them to help but we still had to do all of the maintenance on the tubes and annualy we tube loaded 1 weapon using block and tackle just so we knew how to do it for that oh crap situation where we lost hydraulics in the room for some reason.
Darrin
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Between the reenactors, the Creek students, and other help I woud think that most or all of the deck would be completed by the fall.
Hey Mark...Fall of what year? :P :D ;)
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Ok Ok. No ones perfect. At least it is getting done. :uglystupid2:
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Hey don't mess with us Creek kids! If we knew how to cut the wood and if Joseph could learn what a ratchet is. (picking on him lol) then we could get that thing done in no time! ;D
Plus, where else would you find some free labor 4-5 days a week for 2 hours. :2funny:
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Yeah Rick, don't I know it.
I think everyones expectations, including mine, were a bit high. Until I got started on this back in May, I had no idea how much work was involved.
And now for another of my shameless plugs...Dec. 13th work day...come one, come all.
John - I reserve the right to mess with anyone...and I'd absolutely LOVE some free labor...say on Dec. 13th. :D
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Here are a couple of photos of one of our MK 27's we found in the scrap pile. The Park had discarded it when it started to rust and it set in the scrap pile for years. we were told we were wasting our time. Took two weeks and cost us $40. The brown color is had to duplicate but we came close. This is not the final color.
Tom
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Do any of the other boats have any extra torpedo straps? I've been trying to find a couple or at least just one to have reverse engineered.
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Corey,
the Portsmouth boats straps are different from the EB straps, you may want to take one of the correct ones that you have on Batfish and reverse engineer that, that will make sure that you have the correct straps..
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Unfortunately, as far as I know, we don't have ANY on, around, or near our boat. :(
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Here are two pictures of the straps on the Pampanito
http://www.maritime.org/wish-strap.htm
With all this talk about new torpedos - can I have one to take home and play with? ;D
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Tom, your Mark 27 looks nice. Good work.
Mark A., your new fish look in great shape. I'm from the school of "the more, the merrier" when it comes to loading torpedoes in museum boat torpedo rooms. That way, visitors truly can begin to try and grasp just what life among the tin fish was like.
Fred
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CT- I will get photos of our straps this weekend, they are different than the Pamanito's, we may also be able to send one for you to reverse engineer.
JT- Come on down to the Drum, we will let you play with our torpedoes to your hearts content.
Fred- thanks, we had fun. Had to replace 50% of the metal, all metal no bondo or fiberglass.
Tom
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Correy,
I placed a call into the Torsk Volunteer Association director of the board tonight and asked to see IF we have ANY extra PORTSMOUTH torpedo lashing straps that we could send to you for reverse engineering, while we have some extra EB lashing straps there are minor differences between the two I could not tell you what they are because I have never used them on a WWII diesel boat, the 688's are the same regardless of the yard the boat was manufactured in and I understand that there was a difference between the earlier boats straps. Be forewarned IF we have one that we can spare you will have to help pay part (if not all of the shipping) for the strap and it will be on loan to the Batfish. Hopefully Monday or Tuesday I will know if we have any to spares to send to you, and yes IF possible we would like the plans also so we can replace the EB straps that we have modified to work on Torsk.
Darrin
TVA Volunteer
(757) 291-5177 Cell
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Darrin,
That sounds like a fair deal. Rick, do you think that the museum can pick up the shipping cost? In return, I'll do this at no cost to anyone AND I'll share what information we get with the other boats. All we'll all have to do is take these files to any reputable machine shop that can read CATIA V-5 files. With these files, any good machine shop can turn out all the metal components and reproduce them to within +/- .030".
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corry
You got it. Let me know how much and I will get something worked out.
Rick
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Hopefully I will have an answer for you all early next week about the torpedo lashing strap
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Here are the photos of the straps on the Drum.
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So in the second picture, is that a leather covered braided steel strap? It's hard to tell.
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It should be covered braided strapping
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Oh guys, this should be almost too easy to reproduce. The biggest cost is going to be for the brass needed to cast them out of...unless we wanted to use aluminium. That alone could almost cut the cost of reproduction in half. It would also be a way to tell the originals out there from repros. These will take some time and effort but I think we can have the center piece cast and then just assemble them ourselves. After I get the scanning done, I'll get some price quotes from some of the local machine shops.
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Yes it is braided steel wire. The other half is just 1/4" steel. Not sure why they only wraped the braided side in leather.
Tom
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Waiting on Baltimore Maritime Museum to make the decision right now about the torpedo lashing strap, as soon as I get the word I will let you know
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UPDATE: er-ah there is no update yet, BMM hasn't responded yet from what I understand to the request for us to loan you a strap :tickedoff:
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No rush. Good things come to those who wait...at least that's what the catchup commercials used to say. :)
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I know but I hate to promise something when actually I can't because I am not management with BMM/Constellation. HOPEFULLY they will realize that this will benefit more of the museum community then just Torsk, which is what my intention is with these torpedo straps and with helping all of the submarine museum community out with the school of the boats.
When are you planning to load weapons?? just wondering so I can guesstimate when to start that school of the boat, I am wanting to do that one in advance to your load out so you and others can walk through the steps and modify the loading process as needed for your boat.
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My guess is next year after the new deck is laid down.
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Just let me know when you start to get close so I can set down with a few good TM's and make this one happen ;)
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Will do. e are working on gettng the torpedo tubs open right now. That looks to be the "easiext" way to load these right now.
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Rick,
Are you planning on "back hauling" the weapons through the tubes instead of loading the weapons the way that they are supposed to come onboard??? reason I am asking this is because there is a LOT of things that have to be done for this to work correctly and it may take more to load them from the muzzle doors..
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ALL,
I just posted a link for you to see how Torsk and her crew loaded weapons in 2000 and then again in 2002, we no longer have our weaopns shipping hatches due to them being cut for the tourists ladders, so this is what our TM LPO and crew came up with to load our weapons and SONAR equipment.
Here is the link: http://www.submarinemuseums.org/forum/index.php?topic=582.0
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Lesley and I move our MK 27 from the forward room to the after Room by leaving the visitor ladders in place and using three chain falls to keep it off the ladder. We didn't have the use of a crane so we atttached one chainfall to the 5" gun barrel and used that as our hoisting point. Once on deck we put it on a home made rolling skid and rolled it to the after hatch, turned it around and again used three chain falls to lower it into the room. Took us about 4 hours. That was the same method used to move two skids from the forward room to aft. The restored MK 27 was easier because it was much lighter.
Just take it slow and easy how ever you do it.
Tom
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Rick,
Are you planning on "back hauling" the weapons through the tubes instead of loading the weapons the way that they are supposed to come onboard??? reason I am asking this is because there is a LOT of things that have to be done for this to work correctly and it may take more to load them from the muzzle doors..
This is the initial plane. I have been reading the posts and realize htat there is a large amount of work that will need to do thia. Unfortunately we are an a very soft ground and there seams to be avery big lack of help for us out here. There jus does not seem to be a good crain in Muskogee that can get to us. The pipe yard next door is very kind in letting us use their large forklift, but it does not reach to the top of the boat.
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Rick
You are right the load thru the muzzle door should be easier if you can get one of the doors open. It might be a good idea to remove the rollars from inside the tube be for you start just to insure there is enough clearence. If the rollars have the narrow gap in them the MK27 guide rails will get hung up in the rollars. Also suggest taking the wood spacers off the stern of the 27 so you have a better place to atttach a sling or line. Have fun.
Tom
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Darrin is correct about trying to back load a torpedo through one of the tubes. You could end up with a stuck fish. All of the safeties need to be disconnected, trripping latch mechanism along with the gyro, speed and depth spindles. I think it would be more work than trying to get help to load from topside.
A torpedo is in three basic sections, warhead, energy section, and engine. I don't know the condition of your torpendo, but what is the possibility of taking it apart and loaded each secion individually? Then reassemble once below. This would take some time but could be easier. torpedo's have balance points so you will need to consider this for each section. I don't know if anyone has tried this - we did have the ability to do some maintenance, which could include taking apart the torpedo if needed while underway. There was not not point indoing this so it was not common. I can only remember once taking the engine section off - the Chief wanted to show us something - his only reason.
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Rick, do you have any of your handeling gear topside?? it was stowed underneath the deck on the Starboard side if I remember correctly and it constists of basicly a large A frame and boom that goes over the side to pick the weapon up out of the water and block and tackle was used in conjuction with it. You need to take a look at this link if you haven't done so already, it walks you through the torpedo tube interlocking mechanism and how to set it up so that you can open the muzzle and the breech door at the same time.
http://www.hnsa.org/doc/fleetsub/tubes/chap4.htm#4A
IF you haven't done so by now START greasing the tubes and the interlocks along with the hull zerk fittings for the shutter doors and muzzle doors and when you start to open your shutter/muzzle doors make sure that you do that slow and continue to grease them the whole time and move them back and forth little by little until they are both all the way open and then block the ram(s) so that they will not start to shut while you have people cleaning out the shutter door area and when you start to load your weapons.
How high can the fork lift get as far as tube wise??? because I am looking on the batfish virtual tour and it appears that tubes 3,5,6 have water in them at least in this pic. The reason that I know that is the sight glasses are red and they aren't supposed to be unless there is water in them and if that is just discoleration that is an easy fix to take the lens covers off after the tubes have been verified empty and soak them in warm soapy water and then clean them up and put them back on. The other problem with having water set in the tubes for a number of years is the barnacles and growth that happens inside of the tubes. while I am using the term barnacles they really aren't but they are a pain in the butt to clean out and then preserve taking care not to damage the tubes or the breech door which is bronze.
The after torpedo room tubes look to be dry (again from the virtual tour) but I don't see any skids in the aft room? while that isn't a problem just means that it will be sticking out of the tube and onto the mine table, again I would use an upper tube for that for two reasons. 1. easier on the backs when pulling the weapon in and 2. IF the area floods you won't have to worry too much about water coming into the people tank if the muzzle door doesn't get sealed all the way back up.
Remember the after tubes are longer then the forward room tubes by a couple of feet so take that into consideration when figuring out how much block and tackle you are going to be needing.
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Hey John,
we loaded our Mk 45 by breaking it apart and restoring it and not putting it together until it was onboard, a standard hand truck was used along with a couple of come alongs to get it down into the room safely.
And yes John is correct about the lifting points on the weapon because the true center of gravity has changed when they pulled the 572 lbs of TORPEX out and filled it with concrete or plaster, and you have to be carefull because you can bend the weapon
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Not having the ability to remember much anymore, but there is a point when loading a torpedo from topside that the weight must be taken up with a chainhoist below so that the torpedo can be lowered into the skids. Strain is kept from topside, and as the torpedo is balanced from below you can lower away. All of this is done very slow. You can see what this was very hard while at sea.
The torpedo is coming down at an angle on a loading skid. As the torpedo is finally all the way down the loading hatch and clear, you then need to take up all slack on the chainhoist in torpedo room to allow the loading skid to be removed, the torpedo suspended (balanced), and then lowered into a skid. Never allow any slack. I would not try this today without 8-10 men.
Here is an old picture of a U-boat crew loading a torpedo in WWII. the A-frame assembly over the torpedo should be a hoist at the balance point of the torpedo. It should have been from this point that the wieght is transferred to the lower chairhoist once below.
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I have another thought - it was mentioned that no crane is available to helphoist the torpedo aboard. But there is a nearby forklift that could be of some assistance. So can you erect some sort of davot on board that you can use as your crane? Davots are commonly used on ships, while not submarines, as a lifting device. It would be a bit challenging to transfer from forkleft to davot, but possible. The Davot is only needed to bring the torpedo on board. After swung inplace on your loading cradle, you can then use normal handling equipment to lower into the boat.
What you need is to find a good Bosun's Mate to help with the rigging.
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Rick,
I have a feeling that I'm going to piss some people off with this but I at least want to give you my opinion. The only reservation that I have on back-loading is this. If there are any warps, dents, or otherwise contorting features (like with the other torpedoes in the park), it may place the fish out of the tolerances it needs to be placed inside the tube. If you take into consideration the entire length of the torpedo, it would take less than a fraction of 1 degree of a bend (less than even the calibrated eye can detect) to throw it out of tolerance. Since the fit is so tight, we need to be absolutely certain that the torpedo hasn't shifted in it's dimensions before we manhandle it into the tube. It would really suck to get it in 3 or 4 feet and have it stick. You wouldn't be able to move it and you couldn't take away the support or it's own weight would tear it up.
Personally, I wouldn't recommend going this way at all but that's just my humble opinion. Necessity is the mother of all invention so let's see what other ideas we can come up with. We still have a few months to figure this out. I say, let's take it slow. We can always come up with more time but one screwup will cost us big.
Correy
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Check out the pictures in this other thread... http://www.submarinemuseums.org/forum/index.php?topic=582.0
We have some or most of the "crane" assembly below the deck. I always wondered what this stuff was for and now that we have photos, it makes sense. Would anyone be opposed to going this route? We might need to fabricate a few missing pieces and the stuff that we do have needs some TLC.
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Mark,
with the crane assy you also need the nose cone for the weapons, what this cone does is set on the nose of the weapon and a pin goes through the warhead assy to keep it inplace and allows for the block and tackle to attach to the front of the weapon and you will also need to attach lines to the back of the weapon (saftey factor for equipment over 60 years old). Please remember that these weapons weigh over a TON and that IF anything goes wrong it can go wrong quickly so you have to have a back up safety on the weapon so that no one gets hurt.
My recommendation for Batfish or anyone else to load weapons that don't have a crane close by is to break the weapons down and make them into reasonably managable pieces of equipment where really only a chainfall is needed once the pieces are brought onboard. With breaking the weapons down you can also send them out to a body shop and have them painted and then reassemble them onboard in the torpedo room.
Here is the link to Torsk bringing her MK 45 onboard in pieces, notice that there wasn't a chainfall required to do this just a good bit of muscle. This weapon was sent to a local body shop for restoration (if I remember correctly) and they didn't charge too much because that was such a unique job and it was something completely different then what they normally do.
http://www.usstorsk.org/volunteers/mk45load/mk4501.htm
Seeing how you don't have a weapons skid in the ATR that leaves you with a very unique situation.. Find a skid or make one and then load it onboard prior to loading weapons or you can back haul the weapon and what needs to happen is get as much of the safety's removed as possible in your tubes and on the weapon so that it goes reasonably well and hope like hell that nothing is warped at all.
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Rick,
I haven't given up on back hauling the weapons and right now I am going to confer with another TM or two and see IF we can't give you all the best way to do it that way or at least the safest way to do from here on the internet. Just remember there is no easy way to bring these things onboard, that is why the boat crews used to joke about us TM's having a strong back and a weak mind, most of us have evolved over the years and gotten smarter and not stronger :2funny:
One question: do you have hydraulics onboard Batfish that work currently???? because if you do getting your muzzle and shutter doors open will be a little easier, however IF they haven't been opened in a few decades you may break more stuff using the hydraulics then by doing it in manual.
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Darren,
None of the hydraulic systems work on the boat. After we sort out the electrical system we'll evaluate what can be restored but right now, it's a mess.
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This is all good conversation. I am always open to new idea. The most difficult challenge we have is actually getting the fish onto the deck. The biggest obstical is the location of the sub that we are dealing with. We are on dry land and that means that the fish will have to be lifted from the keel to the deck. Not to mention that we are located in sand and a bowl to boot. I am not opposed to dismantling the torpedos and reassebling them in the FTR. That was bypassed due to the difficulty involved. (I still would like more information on this one). As correy mentioned, the hydrolics do not work. We are not even going to attempt to use them. We also have 30 years of sitting stagnant to fight. We are still exploring the posibility of opening the #3 tube to load it.
Keep the info coming. As with anything, I think we will know how to load it best once the job is done.
Rick
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Hey Rick,
I recieved an email about the torpedo lashing strap today and IF your curator will contact mine then we can make this happen, he will have to request that we loan the torpedo lashing strap to the Batfish and then the ball should move forward and we could send this out. I am waiting on his contact info and as soon as I get it I will send it too you.
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One of my many titles hers is also Curator. I will be looking for that information. Do I need to be flowery or can I be short and sweet like I always am? :2funny:
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Rick,
I was pretty sure that your "other" title was curator of the Batfish, I will track down Paul's conact information and send it too you. It is truly up to you as how to ask but being a volunteer the only thing that I can say is ask polietly for BMM/Constellation to loan you the straps.
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Check your PM Rick, I sent you BMM's curator's contact info ;)
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Rick
I can lone you a set of strps from the Drum if you have any problems getting the others, they may be a little different.
Tom
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Thank you guys. I am sorry for taking so long in getting back t you. I have been busy last week traveling to Utah. :(