Inside USS Olympia's Coal Bunker
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- Опубликовано: 8 сен 2024
- In this episode, we're on board USS Olympia inside one of her coal bunkers.
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Ryan glad they give you time to show us other ships.
USS Olympia and USS New Jersey are on opposite sides of the Delaware River. They're separated by about 2500 yards. (Years ago I took a great photo of New Jersey framed in one of Olympia's portholes.) USS Bacuna is tied-up directly next to Olympia. Visiting all three makes for a terrific day trip if you're ever in the area.
This reminds me of the coal-fired furnace we had when I was a kid in Queens. Man, the noise the coal would make as it bounced and rolled down a sheet metal slide, into the bin, scared me into fleeing to the top floor of the house every time the coal man arrived.
Once you get to the sophisticated radar directed fire control night/bad weather become irrelevant. The West Virginia had a firing solution at 30kyd at the Battle of Surigao Strait but withheld fire until 22kyds as per battle orders because the bombardment ships did not have a full compliment of AP rounds.
Thank you so much for this and other videos on the USS OLYMPIA. I visited her when I was about 13 and was fascinated by the ship, especially her engine and fire rooms. It helped to stoke my interest in maritime history and steam propulsion that has continued to this day, fifty-plus years later. It was great to see the longitudinal passage and the coal bunkers, things that you never see on the public tours.
My shipmates and I were able to tour Olympia at will when we moored right next to her back in 1986. Comparing this Lady to what was then a modern gas turbine powered destroyer was fascinating, especially the main engineering spaces. I had just finished earning my Surface Warfare Specialist pin and had spent a lot of time in the main engine and auxiliary machinery spaces so ... wow! Made me glad to be a late 20th Century sailor vs a late 19th Century one when everybody (enlisted) had to 'heave coal' when the ship was refueling.
I was in one of those bunkers on their hard hat tour, so special to be able to experience that! The idea of having to work in them is pretty rough.
One could write an essay on how Bismarck died, but basically the Brits were really out for revenge after Hood, the first hit from Rodney killed the command crew and the forward gun director, the third salvo carried away the aft gun director, and then they kept going, at the disabled ship (all Bismarck's big guns were silenced halfway though the action), with the cruisers and Rodney at knife-fight range, King George V hanging back for the plunging fire. Ain't no belt thick enough to protect you from the upper works being blown off from the top down until the 16" shells start bouncing off the belt. But Bismarck still had her flag up, and so never technically surrendered, so, much like tanks, "shoot it until it explodes or " was the order. And boy howdy, did they ever, even apparently getting a torpedo hit on the upper works after the ship rolled over after being scuttled to stop the carnage.
Beating on a disabled enemy like that borders on a war crime. With damage like that it's quite possible they COULDN'T strike their colors.
@@MK0272, never been in a war, huh?
@@MK0272, the Brits were out for revenge and they proved to be just as cold and barbaric as the Nazi's in this case. They knew the Bismarck was finished but just kept pounding her until the crew finally managed to scuttle her. Then, as is the true British way, they claim that THEY sank her which is an outright lie!
@@richardcline1337 tbh the brits did sink her, she Bismarck was done either way, the crew just sped up the inevitable.
Revisionism.
Thanks for showcasing these other ships in the Seaports collection. The Olympia is an amazing ship, and in really really good condition considering it is 125 years old.
Great news about your recent donation for your teakwood deck project ! Keep up the good work .
This is the best show on UTube. So informative and smart. Thank you Sir.
I grew up in Philadelphia going down seeing the Olympia and the USS buchana submarine the sad part about it was I wasn't able to take a tour of the New Jersey as New Jersey was stationed right in the front of Philadelphia naval shipyard and he walked down the way if I remember correctly the jerseys and one slip and it was constant was in the slip right next to her those were great times I always wanted to tour one of those battleships when they put them back in service I was so delighted I was going to join the Navy just so I could be a Gunner's maid on a battleship and then they mothballed him for the last time it would have been a dream come true I enjoyed the hell you're showing up the Olympia all the videos you've done so far keep up the work I'm building a scale model of the USS Olympia Lindbergh model and I'm using a lot of your videos and stuff to help do detailing as I'd like to do a scale model of the New Jersey you have an ornate passion for your work as a curator on the New Jersey and All ships keep up the good work I enjoy watching your videos
Run on and on and on and on
Putting coal bunkers along the side of the ship, at the waterline, was done as a flooding control measure. Flooding replaces air with water, but it can't replace solid objects. And chunks of coal are solid objects. So if a coal bunker floods, only the gaps between the pieces of coal can fill with water.
That's why these are not the primary coal bunkers. The primary bunkers get used first, leaving the coal in these bunkers to limit flooding. This coal is used for sailing home, once the chance for combat has faded.
Go back a generation, or generation and a half, from the Olympia, to when the problem was we need coal on the thing to power the steam plant since we now have a steam plant on the thing. The protection it offered is really secondary, and more the result of where they could put the bunkers on a warship that would need to have the things refilled on a regular basis. The coal and bunkers are there to move the ship, they happen to be in the right place to add to the protection, but the protection side of this is secondary to keeping the ship powered.
@@seantu1496 They "happen to be in the right place"? That implies accident. So all the worlds fleets at the time were accidentally putting their coal bunkers in the same place?
The US Army had control of coastal defenses back in that era. This included coast defense guns. So they had an interest in shooting at ships. Here's a contemporary quote from the Armor and Ships, Journal of the United States Artillery (1910): "The question of coal in the upper bunkers at the sides of warships is important because of the resistance such coal offers to direct penetration. Some authorities claim that the principal function of the coal is to smother fragments of bursting shell and that its value as protection is only incidental. It has been found, however, that two feet of coal is equivalent in resisting power to one inch of iron. This is specially important in deck protected cruisers, which depend largely on the coal above the protective deck for their protection. On this account the coal in the upper bunkers at the side is used last."
Ryan already covered coal as armor in this video. I was pointing out that it also served as a flood control measure. And it certainly didn't happen by chance.
@@alcibiadesW "Happen to be in the right place" means as a ship builder, you are first building a ship and dealing with those requirements. After you get something that is a ship, you turn it into a warship. The location of the bunkers was a part of building a steam ship, not a warship, and the location of the bunkers, where they have the volume to carry enough coal, can be filled from the top, but still be able to get the coal out of the bottom to feed the boilers, just happens to be an ideal location to provide extra protection.
As a former tank mechanic and with experiance moving target vehicles on different ranges, I'd say angled armor is your best bet. Although no armor is completely immune from, as you've said, that magic/golden BB shot.😎
...as both Hood and Bismarck nicely illustrated for us. Yes. I mean, to deliberately put a 15-inch shell into the trough created by a ship's bowwave, into the hull right below the armored belt, through a machinery space and into a 4-inch magazine to then cook that off and in doing so detonating the neighboring magazine for the big guns.. that is one trick-shot if I've ever seen one.
@@ranekeisenkralle8265 aaaaand then Bismarck gets clubbed by the entire damn Royal Navy
@@invadegreece9281 correct. That was what it took. That and the scuttling charges. (Without which the ship would have suffered implosions on its way to the bottom.
@@ranekeisenkralle8265 was a bit overkill tbh
@@invadegreece9281 Not really. According to a survey on the wreck it was found that the armor still is mostly intact. Analysis of that survey agrees that the ship would have remained afloat for hours longer before eventually sinking on its own - if not for the scuttling charges. By closing the distance so much, the British didn't do themselves any favors. Instead they only made it harder for themselves.
I have never studied the bunker plans for Olympus, but it strikes me as odd that they designed upper bunkers so that it required shoveling into the primary bunkers beneath them. That would require handling the coal in the auxiliaries twice. Plus, once coal levels in primary bunkers started dropping, trimmers would have to enter them to redistribute it. It would be necessary to pull trimmers out of a primary bunker while coal was shoveled into it from the auxiliary above. On Battleship Texas, the upper and lower bunkers were completely separate from one another and each was coaled through its own dedicated main deck scuttle. Upper and lower bunkers also had their own separate scuttles in the boiler rooms. Lower bunker directly opened to the boiler rooms through their scuttles. The coal from each upper bunker fed through a permanent chute that extended from it, through the lower bunker directly beneath and connected to its boiler room scuttle. That allowed selective feeding in the boiler rooms and trimmers could work uninterrupted in all bunkers.
Thank you for the information. I would be interested in reading more about the TEXAS's fueling systems. Can you point me toward anything published?
@@Pamudder Go to my channel. I have a video on the conversion from coal to oil on Texas.
Nice video and am glad you are also covering Olympia. I would suggest though- Not everyone watching this is familiar with ship or war ship history. It may have been a good idea to give a quick review for those who do not know. Something like- From the time of sail to around 1920s/or so. When ships became powered by engines/steam/turbines/etc. they used coal to power them and it was time consuming to load the ships of this coal and to feed the boilers, etc. When oil was invented to power ships, it changed everything. Olympia is one of the few remaining war ships that wee coal fueled, etc. just a thought. thank you for all you do.
Fascinating. Great subject well done.
Love the love you show us and the ships with every video.
Great talk about armored ships! I'm not sure if you know it, but there is a new PC game coming out called "Ultimate Admiral: Dreadnaughts" that allows you to design and fight any class of warships, any country, from 1890 to the 1940s. It allows you to determine the armor type, thickness, and armoring scheme as well as the Powerplant, rangefinders, primary and secondary weapons, torpedos, crew loading, and travel range to build custom ships to fight in different scenarios. It is in early access now, and when finished it will include a campaign. It truly amazes me with how good it is even in this early stage.
I highly recommend this game for anyone with a passion for early 20th century warships. Wanna build a Bismarck with quad, 4 barrel 20" guns? How about a destroyer with a 55 knot top speed and 16 torpedo tubes firing oxygen torpedoes? A 130,000 ton Yamato with 9" guns everywhere and a 150 torpedo broadside? Just about anything is possible, and it really teaches you about the trade offs you need to make to build a really good ship.
I have that game . Like it lots. Can't wait for it to be ironed out.
good to know about a ship that fires cola 0:25
Maybe she saw service in the cola wars from the 1980s?
I would think that there is no best armour. There were a number of extremley good armoured ships, but what is best probably depends on the exact situation in a battle.
Since SS US is right down the harbor and since her plant was based on naval boilers and turbines it would be cool to see a series on her.
In Wisconsin was the other ship in the slip next to her it didn't come out right on talk to text but yeah New Jersey and Wisconsin where the two ships stationed in front of we take the main way into the naval shipyard it was such a beautiful sight
Thank you for making and sharing this video have a good night.
Moving away from coal had many more advantages than just increased range. Anything that could lower the needed crew by 20 or so hands in a warship would be a welcome boon (depending on the size, could be more). Even before the days of fleet tankers being able to refuel while steaming, it was still much faster and easier to take on oil than coal. Plus, fuel oil does not have the dangers of spontaneous combustion like coal dust has. The smoke is less (as long as the oil-burning boilers are in good shape and cleaned regularly... generally needing considerably less cleaning that coal-fired ones), and the lower space and weight requirements for fuel tanks verses coal bunkers means more armor or armament is possible for the same tonnage. Top speeds could be maintained longer without the extreme fatigue and heat-stroke of the Stokers, and without the slag filling up the boilers requiring cleaning at a bad time. Oil had its own problems, but not nearly as many.
It is interesting though, that several hundred merchant ships that were built in WW2 still burned coal; most from the UK and Canada like the "Parks" (their versions of "liberty ships"), and a US-built coal-burning variant of the Liberty that was sold to the UK . Mainly because those countries had a lot more coal than oil. The difference in performance was far less important in merchant ships than warships.
My great uncle was a Stoker on a US Navy coal-burning transport in the Pacific in 1942 . He said it was hell... sometimes he would lose 10 pounds a day in sweat (he was a big and tough 19-year old in those days). But he got into a fight with a petty officer, and as punishment they made him crew on a Higgins LCVP boat... He saw combat in several beach assaults including Saipan. No matter how bad you have it, there is always something worse.
What was the fight over?
@@studinthemaking I'm not sure it was hard enough to get him to open up about the rest so I didn't press it. He never told his kids any of that... Some of the Saipan stuff was very dark. My grandmother told me it took a long time for him to adjust when he got home. I kept asking and after a few years he finally did let it out.
Question have you guys ever thought of making a trip over to the UK. if you ever do see if you can get aboard HMS Belfast in London and HMS Gannet in Kent both wonderful ships and you guys might enjoy them
If we ever find the money we will!
@@BattleshipNewJersey you guys and drach are my favorite naval historic channels. I've seen the Alabama and drum. Would love to make it out to New Jersey one day.
The armor scheme of having a canopy of friendly aircraft. ;)
Excellent!
Another Great Video !
RE: Plunging fire. The auxiliary coal bunkers would be at their thickest point for any sane angle (non-mortar) of plunging fire, perhaps eight to ten feet or potentially much more. The coal is going to absorb most or all of the love from the shell.
The audio has become so bad inside a ship they decided to use captions lol. I still love the videos ngl.
Maybe they could attach mover's blankets to the walls out of range of the camera to help deaden sound, at least in some circumstances. That or there has got to be software to automatically filter the echos out.
Yeah, I kept trying to turn off the captions.
Have any ships used explosive/reactive armor?
Great video!!!
So cool!
Where can i get a Cola firing cruiser? :p
I think Pepsi had a couple to spare in 1989
LOL... I caught that as well!
Love your work. As a fellow media producer, I would suggest that next time you have a situation where good audio is this difficult (consider a lav mic) perhaps using the video as B roll and overdubbing in post to get a product that is easier for the viewer to understand? Best wishes
A) So Ryan, where did that hand-hold ladder behind you lead?
B) In light of "sea-skimming" missiles being a thing, I feel that there would be merit using a belt & turtle shell combination on the next generation cruiser. By that I mean a proper heavy cruiser, not just an "enhanced destroyer" design like we currently have.
I've thought about the utility of re-armoring modern ships too; however, I'm just not sure it can be affordably done anymore with the amount of explosives that are packed into missiles combined with their ability to choose side strikes or top attacks. I definitely think it is worth some research though, because just accepting an entire ship lost for one missile strike doesn't seem economical either.
The counter to armor plate would be DU munitions. But even then some real armor could be beneficial. I do not know if any navy as actually tested missiles against a reasonable armor scheme.
Paul, you assume sea-skimmers hit straight-on. However they rise shortly before the target and then fall down. No armor can protect that.
@@bartk07 Well that is simply nonsense to say that armor *_can't_* be used to protect a ship from plunging fire.
Practical, affordable, a potential risk of capsizing,...all of these elements certainly are considerations. However, it isn't _impossible_ for a ship to defend against sea-skimming missiles, especially in conjunction with CIWS, anti-missile missiles, potentially lasers and rapid blooming chaff.
Armor would certainly help protect the ship in the event of a detonation of the incoming missile close to the ship, i.e. at the last second.
It might be interesting to think in terms of "what" gets armored. Perhaps heavily armor vital spaces and make the rest of the ship out of tissue paper so the shots go in one side and out the other. Start talking hypersonic and I doubt you can carry enough armor to stop 'em and still float.
What kind of protection do you want? That determines your armor scheme. No sense using a turtleback armor scheme on a flattop; unless you want it to be shot at... Or likewise building a paper thin tin can battleship, with basic armor. The question isn't "which is best", it's What threats are the most prevalent and likely the ship will face. Given that ships are major capital investments, you will want to protect it from what's out there now, and what you can realistically theorize will be out there in the future life of the ship based on intelligence gathered.
If you could fabricate plate steel with an internal honeycomb structure, you could build a treaty-compliant ship with double the effective armor.
I don't believe anyone was working with honeycomb materials in the effective era of the London Treaty. Fabrication would have been incredibly difficult. Honeycomb materials were used thirty years later in the SR-71 and the XB-70, and still presented enormous technical challenges.
It's to bad there is no audio for the clip of the two sailors at 6:18
Hey look at that big hole bill. Oh yeah I see it Hank.
Yeah. The flaws of 100 year old footage. Audio is usually non existent
I watched a video one time this woman was an expert lip reader and it was footage of world war I and the men in the trenches. She gave a voice to men who had probably not been heard in the better part of a hundred years.
@@robertstone9988 That would be incredibly interesting!
@@timdouglass9831 wish I could remember what the video was called it is on RUclips
Where did you all find that footage of USS Kearsarge at 7:54?
Cool
How common were coal bunker fires? Fire suppression systems? Some speculate the Titanic sailed with a bunker fire weakening her hull/bulkhead and the USS Maine may have had a bunker fire. Cheers!
How much ventalation would be present in the fuel stores?
My thinking is that sealing the compartment to smother a fire might do an awful lot to help control any fires.
In addition to that, a few pipes to allow diverting water into the top of the bunkers?
I guess it comes down to how much heat a fire could produce with the air present in the compartment; whether that is enough to spread the fire through the compartment walls, damage the structural integrity via warping the metal, or otherwise damaging nearby systems.
(This is pure speculation, by the way.)
@@rarrawer Titanic's coal fire was actually just a smoldering fire which they smothered out and my understanding is that was the way it was done until they needed the coal and a crew would go in and work the coal out to the boilers.
Great video.
Ooooooo coal bunker!
USS Olympia- it's all rivets; USS Fletch- it's all ball bearings.
A ‘cola powered ship’!
Very good show. Two questions there was a bit of old footage with two story turrets , which ship was it. Second where might find trajectory charts for main guns and there flight time and finally how does mussel velosity compare with flight times? Ie say a Brooke rifle whish had a range of 7200 yards firing at 35 degrees compared with New Jersey is the longer range mostly an effect of the shells higher speed?
Speed x mass = impulse.
So do nuclear aircraft carriers have any armor protection for the reactors?
Did they have fast cruisers during the war that had good guns and fast speed but light armour? Could they hunt battleships in a pack of say 3 and have each take a turn at coming into range, firing a salvo and backing off in order until the threat was eliminated? Thus a less valuable asset is expended in eliminating a very high value asset.
Generally speaking a cruiser is not going to carry big enough guns to reach the battleship before it got hit itself. And if you were going to hunt in a "pack", going in one at a time would be just what the battleship would want you to do, he could deal with them one at a time. Research the battle between the British cruisers and the German "pocket battleship"
Graf Spee.
Ryan of the Battleship USS New Jersey Museum and Memorial- do think that any of the Iowa class battleships would be able to sink the Bismarck at close range?
Video answer: ruclips.net/video/SkEnUzL_gRg/видео.html
Should come to the uss lci in Portland oregon
Who are these people who hit the dislike for shame
They didn’t have mechanical coal stokers?
not in the 1890's
Believe still had coal strokers at beginning of WW2
They manually stoked the original coal fired boilers on Battleships Texas and New York until they changed to oil fired boilers in 1925-26. I haven't seen any discussions on mechanical stokers from that period to know precisely what their problems may have been at the time, but I have read procedures for firing coal fired boilers. It actually required considerable skill and attention by the stokers. They had to have a good eye and good shovel technique to properly spread coal over the grate and maintain it at a the proper depth. They also had to be able to move burning coal around to break up clinkers. There was also a lot of variation in quality of coal, depending where it came from. High quality anthracite coal burned hot, clean and produced relatively little ash. Softer coal put out less heat and could be very dirty, requiring frequent grate cleaning and removal of ash. Unless you had a constant source of high quality coal, I suspect it would be very difficult, if not impossible for a mechanical system to address all of these issues.
@@tomscotttheolderone364 I have read that the main reason mechanical stokers were not commonly used on board ships is that they took up too much valuable space in the boiler rooms. Your point about the skill involved in stoking is aptly evidenced by steam locomotives. Most of the last generation of steam locomotives had mechanical stokers that ground the coal and fed it with an auger to the back of the firebox, where oscillating steam jets fed it to the various parts of the grate. This was a huge saving of labor for the fireman and allowed him to devote more time to water-tending and acting as lookout on the left side of the locomotive. However, all these systems usually needed help from the fireman in adding additional coal and spreading it to keep a hot, even fire without holes, removing clinkers and shaking down the grates as required.
Was this a busman's holiday ?
Did they use hard or soft coal?
Hard anthracite coal was preferred, it had higher percentage carbon and less contaminants than the softer bituminous coal. However, they would burn the best they could get their hands on. One Navy manual said that if coal was being received from a commercial vendor in a foreign port, they should burn one ton of it to determine its quality before taking on a full load.
is the Olympia a St. Louis class protected cruiser?
No. She is a unique cruiser and predates St Louis by a number of years.
The variety of ships is great but. Sound was making me sick, had to stop the video.
The German turtleback armor scheme
Ryan had to wear a hardhat so he wouldn't have to comb his hair.
"Black GOLD", What you do with the, coal ash?
On Olympia, there are several ash scuttle systems. Basically, the engineers had to shovel the ash into cylindrical "scuttles" (cans) about 2 ft dia and 3 ft tall. Those were hauled up tubes to a higher deck by steam winches (literally steam engines and windlasses riveted to the bulkheads). From there, the scuttles were taken out of the tubes through a little door, then trollyed or just man-handled across the deck over to another set of big tubes that ran downward at an angle through the deck and out the sides of the ship. Then, the ashes were dumped, and over the side they went.
Designs after Olympia, such as Battleship Texas, had hoists that mixed ash with water, then pumped the slurry up and out of openings in the hull above the waterline. Others had ejectors that pumped it out below the waterline.
An alloy is only after two or more metals are mixed not beforehand. The manual captioning is distracting and changes what your saying, please leave this off as youtube has this as an option.
A 'cola-firing' ship?
Captioning is hard!
Cause how you gonna have gunboat diplomacy without gunboats?
^
Must have cleaned the bunker except it to be black
6th
Cuba is hot. Sucks
Whoever uploaded this with the subtitles needs to be fired.
Terrible acoustics
RUclips's automatic closed captioning was was better than that junk you are running in this video.
Then offer your services