Wooden Ships and Iron Men - Minesweepers
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- Опубликовано: 2 апр 2023
- In this episode we're on board USS Lucid talking about how minesweepers stay safe from magnetic mines.
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Minesweepers are the only type of ship where having the US Navy chasing you isn't a strong indication that you've made a terrible error.
I served on MSO 437 Enhance till she was decommissioned in 1991, best experience of my life. Till this day when I tell people that I have served on a wooden ship I’m met with skeptical looks.
She was homeported in Long Beach, Pier 9?
For at least part of her service life, she was homeported at Long Beach. When I was a child, my next door neighbor was the XO. Lt. (jg) Floyd Rabin, if memory serves.
@@deanmccormick8070 I have a picture from the late '50's of 6 minesweepers on the North side of Pier 9 at Long Beach Naval Station. In the early '80's while working at LBNSY, I had a job on one of the two MSO's that were tied up on the South end of Pier 9. Been so long I forgot what the name was.
I toured the USS Inaugural Minesweeper museum ship in the 70's on the St. Louis riverfront. It died a very unfortunate death in the flood of 93 and now sits on its side rusting away on the riverbank.
I've been really enjoying Ryan's comments on ships other than the NJ. USS KIDD is here in my home town (Baton Rouge) and Ryan pointed out the sonar protrusion on the bottom of the KIDD when the water level was unusually low on the Mississippi River. I've been on the KIDD dozens of times and when I was a teacher I would bring my students to tour it. Keep up the good work!
That was very interesting , our sweepers were built with aluminium frames and bulkheads with a wooden hull . Specialized tools were issued for some jobs and any lost in the bibles had to be retrieved . A great explanation of hogging by Ryan . They were very expensive to maintain due to the non ferrous aspect . Fibreglass came in with Hms Wilton - essentially a replica fitted out with identical equipment and that heralded the end of wooden hulled ships . They were great little ships , one was commanded by Prince , now our King Charles .
I didn’t know that the NAVY made wooden ships at all, this is a completely new piece of information for me!
The potable water tanks on the MSO's where made of copper which is very good metal to store water in as I found out as Fuel, Oil and Water king aboard Excel.
I can imagine on Excel it was important to make sure everything was stored in the correct format.
Ryan, thanks for the USS Lucid videos. I served aboard USS Conquest for 2 years in the late 80s, then moved to something a little bigger, but even older: Battleship Missouri😊. Conquest had a very long long career- she was sold to Taiwan, and was only decommissioned permanently a couple of years ago. Keep up the great work!
First minesweeper I was aware of was a small minesweeper built in Seattle, HMS J-826, which after WWII eventually became Research Vessel Calypso. Work done and television shows from that vessel inspired a whole generation of scientists, and I think did much to help convince society at large to regard the oceans as more than a big waste dump.
Great explanation of hog and why it happens to wooden ships. Absent machinery there is still almost as much wood fore and aft but those sections of the ship are narrow and offer very little buoyancy vs. the center of the ships where they were full and buoyant. The knees on the rebuilt parts of the C. A. Thayer (over in San Francisco Maritime National Historic Park) were rebuilt with laminated knees hidden within the original but compromised grown or sawn Douglas Fir knees. They offer a compromise of appearing original but replacing most of the structural integrity of the originals. I live near enough, really need to visit Lucid when they are ready. Thanks for the tour.
I never thought about it but it makes sense to construct the minesweepers out of wood. Another informative video Ryan and Libby please keep it up !!
I have never given a thought to the fact those ships were wood.
I had never heard that, but it makes absolute sense. Enlightening.
Never underestimate the solidity and durability of well build wooden minesweepers! The Type 320 "Lindau-class" of the West German Navy were build of wood in 1957 to 1959. Around 1980 they were reconstructed and upgraded to minehunters, equipped with a mine hunting sonar and two remote controlled mine hunting drones PAP 104. Several remained to in service with the German Navy until 2020. Some of them went into service with the Estonian, Lithuanian and Latvian Naval Forces, one became a private yacht in Italy.
Two of them, "Flensburg" and "Weilheim" became museum ships, "Flensburg" as youth hostel in Duisburg, "Weilheim" in the German Navy Museum in Wilhelmshaven.
Thanks Ryan. I had no idea that these were wooden. Love learning about ships from you.
This video is amazingly good. Tons of information on Lucid, MSOs, and other types of minesweepers.
Awesome!
I served on USS Exultant in 1948-69 and there was a plaque on the mess deck about the fire it experienced before I came aboard. It was almost identical to the Lucid. I then went to the USS Alacrity which was a different design, but still wooden.
I served on the smaller sister ships; the MSC. (Minesweeper Coastal) All wooden hulled with aluminum superstructure.
This was an awesome video. Didn't know they were made of wood!!
Thank you for this tour and explanation. It is so wonderful to really understand what my grandfather accomplished. He and my grandmother came to Canada first then the USA from western Ukraine in 1912. They had very little in the way of resources except that my grandfather was a master carpenter. His father was a miller and they built, ran and maintained grain mills. My grandparents were indentured for 5 years to a Canadian farmer in Saskatchewan and then eventually settled in the twin cities where the St Joseph River empties into Lake Michigan. He built pleasure boats and ships in two shipyards there: Robinson Marine and Dachel Carter. He was Superintendent of Dachel Carter when WWII started. His shipyard had 60 men at the beginning of the war and that grew rapidly to 600! He built at least 6 minesweepers and a PT boat for the US Navy as well as some tugs. My mother christened one of the minesweepers. I have photos of her christening the ship and a slightly damaged photo of the PT boat. I wasn’t born until late summer 1946, so I never got to see the shipyards where my grandfather had worked because he retired and the shipyards disappeared when fiberglass replaced wood.
I served onboard the USS Esteem MSO438 79-81 as a Minesweep Electricians Mate. It was a great ship. We had Waukesha Engines after the FRAM. The outboard main engines were also the two 2500 amp minesweep generators and fwd M/S generator in forward engine. There is a lot of room in aft engine with no equipment
I served on the Esteem and Illusive (MSO 448) in the late 60s. Wonderful memories and friends . RD2
Fascinating vid, thanks for it. No, i did not know that they were still building wooden warships in the Space Age. As a kid my family had wooden boats, and i still remember the horrible amount of maintenance they required... which trumped their romantic appeal for me. Crawling around the bilge with a can of Cuprinol and a brush, or a knife and some Git-Rot, will do that. I'll take waxing gel coat over that any day :) The strange thing about fiberglass is, no one knows how long it will last... about seventy years so far i guess.
Four minesweepers were lost in the Korean War when they struck mines and sank, USS Magpie AMS 25, USS Pirate AM 275, USS Pledge AM 277, and USS Partridge AMS 31
None of those were of this class, the Aggressive-Class. That is what he was speaking of when he said none of these ships were lost to a mine.
@@Ganiscol Four of the five American ships sunk during the Korean War were minesweepers. Obviously you make design changes to the next Class of ships so it doesn't happen again.
My dad had a couple Minesweeper commands in the 80’s. One of which, USS Conquest MSO 488 home ported in Seattle, had a collision with a the USS Barbour County while refueling underway. The wood hull was considerably damaged and Conquest had to be patched and towed to Pearl Harbor by the salvage and rescue ship USS Salvor.
Served aboard USS DEFENDER (MCM 2) from 93-95. Two NATO deployments. Great ship to "cut your teeth on" for a new officer. We only had 6-8 Officers assigned and a crew of about 87.
I remember working aboard the Lucid in the early days of refurbishment, and sanding those knees and planking before any painting.
No idea that they were wood! Fascinating stuff! Also, love the little joke at the end about funding :)
My Grandfater served on UK Halcyon Class Minesweeper HMS Speedwell. When sister ship HMS Sphinx was hit by a bomb that dropped through part of the bridge, mess deck cutting the front of the ship off. Speedwell and Skipjack made attempts to tow it and got some crew off. It eventually swamped in the large waves. Five Officers and fourty nine Ratings were lost. The Captain(Taylor) was killed in the initial explosion.
Hi Ryan. I love it that you are visiting (and showing us) other ships too. New Jersey is great annd fascinating, but so are the others. Keep it up please.
I served as an EM3 on the USS Fortify (MSO-446) and USS Adroit (MSO-509) in 1988 & 1989.
This video made me go look up Packard marine V-12 Diesels. I did not even know those were a thing. Thanks for more cool facts and info!
Hand tools used for ships repairs such as handsaws, hammers, pipewrenchs, were made of bronze alloy they worked but were not very efficient, they were part of the ships inventory and had to be kept and maintained. Most ships had modern tools such as electric saws and drill motors etc. but had to be offloaded and stored on the pier be fore any minesweeping operations.
Thanks Ryan and Libby!
Another extremely educational video! I've since left shipbuilding in the post pandemic world, however, I miss it dearly. If you ever get the chance, please come visit the USS Midway and San Diego Maritime Museum!
In remember degaussing ranges set in the Delta from Colberg Boat Works (where sister ships to the USS Lucid were built), and on SF Bay in front of the City Front. They were indicated on the early NOAA charts
When the RAN sold its first Ton class the buyer sold the bronze cable chain and recovered his purchase price .
The first fiberglass was built in the early 1940s and from there fiberglass got really popular for boat building in the 1950s-'60s. I'm a little surprised that the Navy was building wood boats into the 1980s.
I used to work for a company that built fiberglass yachts , some of them well over 100' long.
I'm gonna go out on a limb and guess fiberglass is a little to fragile for the navies purposes.
@@hurnn1543 fiberglass is insanely strong
a Dutch MSI went through the degaussing range, where they found an anomaly in the forward section, where the officers and NCO's where berthed. Turned out the caps of the beer bottles under the officers wardroom where detected!
I enjoyed this very much, Ryan!! I was stationed on the U.S.S. Implicit, MSO 455 back in the day. From what I have been able to find out it is still in service and is good working order with the Republic of China's (Taiwan's) navy!! It might be interesting to see what changes had been done to keep her current!! Thanks again for another great video!! 😀
I was on her at decommission and did the turn over with Taiwan
lol, as soon as he said non-ferrous hardware and components... i immediately thought OH BOY THATS GOING TO BE EXPENSIVE
In the early 80’ they built a class of wooden mine sweepers in Sturgeon Bay Wisconsin.
Avenger class
If I had tens of tons of brass and copper, Stockton is one of the last cities I would want to be in 😬
Yah, that's kinda meth'ed up! Good security is essential.
I didn't even expect that when they had just finished building the Iowas in the 40s that they were building wooden ships
I served 5 years on USS Defender MCM-2 1990-1995. Newer minesweeper at the time. Very small ship and small crew.
What a fascinating, modern age we live in.
Part of the reason the USS Lucid has been able to be refurbished so accurately is that the Lucid was a sister ship of 3 MSOs that were built at Colberg Boat Works in Stockton CA, where I live. Colberg still had the original working drawings and blue prints for the MSOs they made located in drawers in their warehouse which was still standing on the Stockton Waterfront. (It has now burned down :{ The Colberg family allowed the USS Lucid folks to copy all those blue prints. Some copies are available for viewing aboard the Lucid.
In the 70s there was a minesweeper base on the River Forth in Scotland, Rosyth, or maybe Port Edgar, pretty sure I heard they were made of mahogany
I served on MSO 427 USS Constant, best duty.
The use of non ferrous metals and stain less on
Wooden hulls are pretty mutch standard below the waterline ,this is
Because you usely go for copper proof designs , this means that all thru hull "outside locking" fasteners of metal is not going to get worn away by cooper anod, then you can put copper on the hull to protect from ships worm.
The extra layer of wood on this hull was probably meant as a sacrificial
Part partly for this reason.
The composite wood structure in the hull with the crossing planks are a design to prevent hull sagging, this design is harder to maintain than regular planking ,when you get water line rot you cant just replace the waterline planks ,you have to replace the diagonal planking also, thereby removing intact planking to get to the cange the diagonal planking under. beams on the inside under the deck beams is mostly for transferring side loads from frames inbewen them to the deck beams/and to bolt the beams to the frames. They would also take up dynamic forces of the hull when sea going,
You often had a extra keel on top bottom frames , and it would be bolted all the way thru to outside one. This was to keep the hull from sagging. Sailing ships benefit from having the rigging helping to "lift "the for and aft to some degree.
On non rigged ship this is not the case. When old ships got de rigged /(often turned to tow behind barges )
There hull deformation would accelerate, or they would get engines installed in the hull increasing weight
In the less boient aft.
One funny fact is that mildly hull deformation could be solved by dry docking and straiting the hull, then repacking the
End joints on the hull planking hard to keep the straitnes afterwards.
At least for wail.
The composite framework works well,but only as long as the glue stays together, the older glues tend to degrade and the stuff delaminate.
Using natural bows in the timber is more permanent.
One must think about the fact that ships wasn't and is not built with
Looooong life in mind as a first priority.
This creates special problems when trying to keep them alive a long time after there original planned lifespan.
Different materials different challenges.
Edit : oak is acid ad will corrode steel and other less Nobel metals, so steel bolts on oak corrode fast
So Wise , Thank You
Great video!
Great video. Thank for sharing with us.
As usual, very informative 😊
I'm really enjoying all the joke items on the shelves at 5:12
Yes, I knew that minesweepers (or more accurately minehunters) are still built out of wood. In the eighties, the Dutch navy switched to polyester hulls for mine hunters, but that has a number of disadvantages.
Spent many years on MSO's in the late 1980, sweeping for mines in the Persin Gulf. Hated every minute of it!
I understand that one of the reasons why the UK used aluminium frames and wood skin and later glass fibre while the USA used all wood was that the USA has a lot of home grown timber while the UK would have to import it, often from places where WW2 fighting had left a lot of trees with steel shrapnel in them. That would ruin the tools to cut them as well as being a magnetic signature risk.
Very interesting.
USS Bulwark MSO-425 1966. Crappy duty station (Charleston). Got off by volunteering for Mobile Riverine Force.
woo! Norn Abram would go nuts in there :D
All that beautiful oak wood getting painted over would give anyone a heart attack.
Has Ryan made a video about avoiding premature detonation of the powder in USS New Jersey? I would like to watch it.
Navies and armies have gone through efforts to avoid setting off powder stores for a long time. I was reminded of that in a rebuilt War of 1812 fort/museum.
I had no idea Packard made diesels! I always thought they were related to the engine that was used on the PT Boats.
Super interesting
I was a DC on USS Fortify MSO 446. People look at funny when I say I was stationed on a wooden ship. (1990 to 1992)
I've really been enjoying the videos. Ryan brought up PT boats do y'all have a video on them yet or could you do one. I know of one in Fredericksburg Texas at the Nimitz museum but not any others. are there many on display?
PT-658 is in Portland, Oregon. Search it.
My last year in the USAF, 1986 - 1987, I was on the staff (communications center) of the admiral commanding U. S. Forces Caribbean, in Key West, FL. I saw minesweepers once or twice. My favorite bit of my time at Key West was when I was ordered down to be a Side Boy for a French admiral being piped aboard the building.
Who would the side boys be on the New Jersey, and how/where would they operate?
Wellllll looks like I’m taking a trip to Stockton
This is very interesting. You should do more wood woodchips if you can. Like the constitution.
Ryan, your Keys are nickel plated brass no need to leave them home.
Steel keys would rust and eventually not worl, plus stain your pocket.
Like the laminated knees call out.
Interesting engineering challenge as non-ferrous metals tend to be more malleable than steel with less strength.
Stainless has the strength but is far more costly than bronze, brass, or aluminum.
I work at a CNC Machine shop. My experience with costs is Bronze is very expensive, brass a bit less, then comes aluminum (similar to brass in price, and stainless is usually less than brass. But those are machining grades of metals (typically cold drawn bar stock) so I could be wrong about these metals in other forms (like sheeting, beams, plate, cast, or forgings).
Or the tupperwear navy!
Interesting tht the US Navy still had to use wooden ships into the late 20th Century. I believe the USN still has a forest marked for their use.
My understanding is that forest is for the sustainable upkeep of USS Constitution in particular.
MCM class ships are made of wood, and there are currently a few still in service today.
With high sensitivity they could put metal balls on poles or a metal raft with poles to the side in front of the ship.
@2:24 -- I would argue that stainless steel is a ferrous metal, and doesn't belong in the same category as brass, bronze, etc....
Yeah, ferrous just means there's iron in it. The big thing is avoiding ferromagnetic materials.
In 1951 the USS Bunyon , a wooden hulled minesweeper, was launched in Portsmouth New Hampshire and after sea trials was assigned to clear mines off the coast of Korea. She was in her second week of service when a magnetic mine took off her stern. An investigation learned that instead of oak and other maritime woods she had been constructed using ironwood, a cheaper alternative earning the shipyard huge profits. As the name implies, the use of ironwood doomed the ship.
thy call it ironwood because it is hardness and doesn't float not because it is magnetic or has iron in it and it would be very difficult to work with so BS story
BM 3 USS Illusive MSO 448 1974 to 1977
Tuned in thinking I would get some naval boardgame action (" -.-)
Hey, the title sounds like a 1990's game advertised in PC Gamer magazine.🤣
Seriously, hope they minimize hogging of the hull.
I actually met the EO from the U.S.S. Guardian who was their during the grounding
I served on the Guardian from ‘07-‘11. Broke my heart when I heard about that. It was like finding out an old girlfriend had died.
I could be wrong, but isn't the RV Calypso a former (not USN) minesweeper?
Looked it up. Calypso was built in the US as a lend-lease minesweeper for the Royal Navy, later given back to the USN and sold following WWII.
If built today I'm feel like almost everything metal onboard could be made out of non-magnetic stainless or aluminum, and would cost much less taking in to account the how common and inexpensive those 2 metals are compared to bronze and copper.
This reminds me of HMS Sussex
I'm a bit curious as to how these boats performed their job. Do they trawl something behind them to set off mines or such?
You can start with reading the Wikipedia entry on minesweepers or else I can paste the entire entry on here in a huge reply.
I still haven't figured out exactly how they determined names for the MSOs. Lucid? Esteem? Nimble? Notable? Pluck?
I did not know
the funniest way to sabotage these things sounds like just nailing a few nails into the side of it somewhere nobody's going to look
I always thought they used less metal to keep these ships from triggering mines, not straight up go to wood
👍👍👍👊👊
Was Jaques Custeau Calypso converted from one of these?
Hello
Didn't one of the newer MCM's go aground on a reef and get cut up in situ?
USS Guardian
What is a Sea Bat, and why can't you feed it?
Probably a marine deep cycle battery, as opposed to a motor vehicle battery. Do not feed is a pun.
How do drones sweep mines? Are just triggering them? Is not that expensive?
Great video. I thought stainless steel was magnetic.
Try putting a magnet on a steel refrigerator. Slides right off.
If keys were a problem, what about small arms? Was the crew totally disarmed during operations?
See 03:34
@@gordonrichardson2972 Thanks. Missed him mentioning those there since the audio was muffled.
Why wouldn’t they make them from aluminum? Was it too difficult for that time period?
Yes. Welding of Saltwater alloy is fairly recent development. 5086 was developed in the 60s while aluminum welding tech was developed during the 50s and 60s. Before that some ships were built using rivited construction. 6061-T6 aluminum was developed in the 1830s and had to be rivited.
Couldn't a ship's hull be made from a non-magnetic metal, like aluminum?
I don't know if lightness translates 1-1 to speed but it sounds good for a minesweeping vessel that probably doesn't want to get into any sort of gunfights.
Al can easily be detected using an AC magnetic field. Wood... not so much.
I was thinking "Why not use aluminum" and then I remembered the littoral combat ships are made of aluminum and are having hull cracking issues, which suggest it's not as simple as replacing all steel thicknesses with an equivalent strength of aluminum.
If wood worse than use it!
Wooden ships 😂 they made ships out of concrete during ww2 as well. It was too save money since the Germans were drinking so many ships. The one in Cape may is barely left after all the erosion but it's a pretty cool ships style
Yeah, but with our manufacturing base, we could drink them under the table any day. ☺
Did the wooden ships move any faster than another steel ship of their size?
Not really - On minesweepers the hull shape limited the speed more than the weight of materials used in their construction. Also the shear volume of timber used makes the hull heavier than one would expect.
@Rob Smith Thanks for the reply. I knew they had smaller boilers but had no idea what their speed was.
@@joebeach7759 Given most WW1 minesweepers were diesel powered there were no boilers on either....
@@18robsmith I thought he said that the minesweeper he was on only had 2 boilers when the New Jersey had 8.
@@joebeach7759 No, it had two diesel engines, driving the two screws, he then went on to discuss the materials used in the engines compared to the normal non-minesweeper ones.
7:57 gorgeous
Yeah prefer the British Hunt and Sundown Class MCVs over the American stuff
What happened to her engines?
William Gardner sold them for scrap, when he was using her as a storage building, of all things, he even had huge hole cut into the side to make her a better warehouse.....
The museum does have one of the Packard diesel engines that will be displayed when it is open. I was told the Packards were made of monel, but that may be incorrect as I was not told by a qualified individual.