Real Submarine Technology & History Q&A

[Torplexed]

I must admit it's pretty clever. Sacrificing one cheap piece of zinc to help preserve the more valuable parts.

Yeah salt is nasty stuff. Drive a car through enough midwest winters and it slowly gets eaten too.

[DaveyJ576]

Originally Posted by Rockin Robbins

My information shows that S-10 was SS-115. Confusing at best.

And the Oops of the Year Award goes to...

Me.

USS S-10 is indeed SS-115. It was a typo...yea...that is my story and I'm sticking to it!

Great links, RR! I had read that S-10 story as well but misplaced the link.

[Rockin Robbins]

No problem. Computers take human error and replace it with a lot harder to find random typos.

Now the question has to be asked, because of the rank of the author of the S-10 story. Is his info accurate or was there indeed an investigation of the condition of the sugar boat fleet. Just guessing here, but since its stablemates were all of the same age in the same environment, it is likely that if an investigation were held they would have found other boats in the same shape. Either that or there was something unique about S-10 that was so obvious to them that no investigation was necessary.

I have no doubt that we're getting the truth about what the author saw and experienced. But that might not be the whole truth about the upper level follow-up.

In any event our sugar boats are brand spankin' new from the factory and never malfunction, the one most glaring omission in Silent Hunter 4. I clearly remember reading an account (Enright of Archerfish?) where he had a radar malfunction and basically wrote, "Damn, there goes half my torpedo load to waste." Malfunctions were indeed the "hidden enemy" not present in our games.

[DaveyJ576]

Originally Posted by Rockin Robbins

Zinc anodes stop electrolytic corrosion, but oxidation is a chemical process not affected by anodes. Paint, muchas chipping and grinding are about the only tools you have there.

RR, thanks for clearing that up! High school chemistry was 25 years ago for me!

I was in the Deck Division on the Darter when I first reported aboard and chipping and painting was a never ending task. Every time we pulled into our home port of Sasebo the first evolution was a fresh water washdown. We would rig up a hose from the pier and hose down the boat in an attempt to remove as much salt residue as was possible. Almost immediately the needle guns and chipping hammers would come out followed closely by the paint brushes. Most of the time it was just touch ups, but twice in one year we completely repainted the boat from the water line up! It was dirty, hot, nasty work and we all hated it, but fully realized that it was vital.

One other nasty job assigned to Deck Division was the cleaning of the zinc anodes. I don't remember the periodicity (I think it was twice a year), but we would have to find every zinc block above the waterline and scrape off the powder left behind by the process that RR described. At first we used wire hand brushes and this took forever. One of my shipmates had a bright idea of using a wire wheel attached to a pneumatic gun. This spun the wire wheel pretty damn fast and it made quick work of the zinc block, but produced a white cloud of dust everywhere. We were rigged up in full protective gear with respirators and sweated our butts off, but it was worth it as it saved a lot of time.

Navy...it's not just a job, it's an adventure!

[DaveyJ576]

Originally Posted by Rockin Robbins

Now the question has to be asked, because of the rank of the author of the S-10 story. Is his info accurate or was there indeed an investigation of the condition of the sugar boat fleet.

I have been around and associated with sailors my entire adult life, and I can tell you that no one ever has the whole "big picture", especially enlisted sailors. They might like to think they do, but they usually don't and sometimes make assumptions. If you think that gossip flows well at a women's club meeting, try hanging out with sailors! Half truths and rumors flow like beer. The more sensational a story may be, the more sailors like it. It is a actual form of entertainment on most boats and ships.

The author of the story may have truly believed that no inspections were made, but may have not known the whole story. All USN ships are periodically inspected (approximately every 5 years) for seaworthiness and condition of equipment by the Board of Inspection and Survey, the dreaded INSURV. Believe me when I tell you that these guys are extraordinarily thorough in their inspections and a boat as bad off as the S-10 was would not escape detection for long.

I myself can not implicitly state that inspections were done, but the simple fact that some of the S-boats served until 1946 indicates that they were not in as bad a shape as is indicated. The S-boats were leaky, smelly, mechanically tempermental, and suffered from their fare share of design flaws. They were a real challenge to take to sea, but were not inherently unsafe.

Once the war started, however some of these rigid inspections went by the wayside. We were desperately short of boats and anything that was even remotely seaworthy went to sea. By 1942, the S-boats were pretty well shot and if the war had not come along they would have been long gone. It really wasn't until large numbers of Gato and Balao class fleet boats began hitting the water that the good ol' S-boats could get a well earned rest.

[DaveyJ576]

Originally Posted by Arclight

I read US periscopes were fitted with colored filters in the rayfilter-assembly (red, green and yellow). How were these used? (red in bright light, yellow at night, etc?)

Arc,

I wasn't ignoring your question, I just had to do a little reading. I came up with the following link:

http://www.maritime.org/fleetsub/psc...4e.htm#fig4-40

It describes the rayfilter assembly in great detail, but not how it is used. You may have seen this already. Unfortunately, I am not an optics expert, so I would have to direct you to photographer or someone with that level of expertise. I have a feeling they were used for photography applications. On the Darter our #2 scope had a similar assembly, but we didn't use it much.

[Platapus]

I have a general naval question that may pertain to submarines.

Chipping Irons

Donald Morris wrote a lot about Chipping Irons and so did Daniel V. Gallery.

Does the US Navy still use Chipping Irons? If not, when did they stop?

[Arclight]

Originally Posted by DaveyJ576

Arc,

I wasn't ignoring your question, I just had to do a little reading. I came up with the following link:

http://www.maritime.org/fleetsub/psc...4e.htm#fig4-40

It describes the rayfilter assembly in great detail, but not how it is used. You may have seen this already. Unfortunately, I am not an optics expert, so I would have to direct you to photographer or someone with that level of expertise. I have a feeling they were used for photography applications. On the Darter our #2 scope had a similar assembly, but we didn't use it much.

I didn't think you were ignoring it, I know it takes time to dig around looking for answers.

And yes, I went over that manual a few times myself, but like you I couldn't find anything about the filters application. Thanks for the suggestions, I'll dig around some more.

[momo55]

Originally Posted by DaveyJ576

I have been around and associated with sailors my entire adult life, and I can tell you that no one ever has the whole "big picture", especially enlisted sailors. They might like to think they do, but they usually don't and sometimes make assumptions. If you think that gossip flows well at a women's club meeting, try hanging out with sailors! Half truths and rumors flow like beer. The more sensational a story may be, the more sailors like it. It is a actual form of entertainment on most boats and ships.

This is very true en nicely told and seems to be universal DaveyJ576 . In the navy i served in ....it was the same . Oooh..and the beer flowed alot in those day's .

The 2 MSO's (American build b.t.w. - Aggressive class ) i served on , had the nickname "beercarrier" among the other european navy's because we had our beerbarrels stocked around the smokestack . Still we had a famous reputation worldwide and knew our job when it came to minesweeping and hunting because we had (still have i think) a little navy , so we specialized in that business .

Can't remember all details of how things where done and worked , buth the stories ,the true ones and the "coctails" , ..those i do ..even 30 years later

Thanks for sharing your RL experience on a sub with us , i salute you sir

(sry for my poor English)

[Nisgeis]

Yellow filters cut out the blue end of the light spectrum. When you are target shooting a black circle on a white background, you get a kind of bluey halo around the black centre. Using a yellow filter on your scope / sights or even wearing a set of yellow glasses will cut down that out and give a clearer circle. I have heard, though never having shot outdoors I can't say, that a yellow filter helps increse sharpness of edges through mist.

[Rockin Robbins]

Being an amateur astronomer I can shed a little light on the filter situation. As Nisgeis said, yellow is useful in low light or low contrast situations to kill the green to blue end of the spectrum and emphasize edges. It almost looks like everything goes black and white.

Similarly there are other rule of thumb applications for other colors.

However, in practice, we have a tendency to try out everything in the box and see whether each one brings out something we need to see. I'm sure the real sub captains, since it was so easy to switch filters, did the same, twiddling compulsively with the filter wheel no matter which filter the rules said would work best. And I'll bet that they, as we do, often found that the random applications often brought out details that were unsuspected until they were tried.

[DaveyJ576]

Originally Posted by Platapus

Does the US Navy still use Chipping Irons? If not, when did they stop?

If you are referring to the implements used for chipping away rust and old paint, then the answer is yes and no.

As I stated in a previous post, preservation of the boat is a never ending task, even in today's Navy. The older style chisel type irons that were used in conjunction with a hammer for the removal of paint chips and rust have been mostly replaced with a hammer that has a chisel type end. In most cases however, today's sailors use pneumatic wire wheels and needle guns. A needle gun contains about two dozens steel rods about half the diameter of a pencil. These rods are vibrated at a high rate of speed by a pneumatic attachment. It is like having two dozen mini jackhammers in your hand. It is very effective at removing paint and rust. The noise it makes when used against the steel hull is nothing short of deafening.

[AVGWarhawk]

Originally Posted by DaveyJ576

If you are referring to the implements used for chipping away rust and old paint, then the answer is yes and no.

As I stated in a previous post, preservation of the boat is a never ending task, even in today's Navy. The older style chisel type irons that were used in conjunction with a hammer for the removal of paint chips and rust have been mostly replaced with a hammer that has a chisel type end. In most cases however, today's sailors use pneumatic wire wheels and needle guns. A needle gun contains about two dozens steel rods about half the diameter of a pencil. These rods are vibrated at a high rate of speed by a pneumatic attachment. It is like having two dozen mini jackhammers in your hand. It is very effective at removing paint and rust. The noise it makes when used against the steel hull is nothing short of deafening.

We use the chipper/chiseled hammer on the Torsk as well as a wire wheel and electric tool to take away paint and rust. Have not used the small hand held jack hammer deals. More things change the more they remain the same....chipping, scraping and sweat

[Rip]

Originally Posted by DaveyJ576

RR, thanks for clearing that up! High school chemistry was 25 years ago for me!

I was in the Deck Division on the Darter when I first reported aboard and chipping and painting was a never ending task. Every time we pulled into our home port of Sasebo the first evolution was a fresh water washdown. We would rig up a hose from the pier and hose down the boat in an attempt to remove as much salt residue as was possible. Almost immediately the needle guns and chipping hammers would come out followed closely by the paint brushes. Most of the time it was just touch ups, but twice in one year we completely repainted the boat from the water line up! It was dirty, hot, nasty work and we all hated it, but fully realized that it was vital.

One other nasty job assigned to Deck Division was the cleaning of the zinc anodes. I don't remember the periodicity (I think it was twice a year), but we would have to find every zinc block above the waterline and scrape off the powder left behind by the process that RR described. At first we used wire hand brushes and this took forever. One of my shipmates had a bright idea of using a wire wheel attached to a pneumatic gun. This spun the wire wheel pretty damn fast and it made quick work of the zinc block, but produced a white cloud of dust everywhere. We were rigged up in full protective gear with respirators and sweated our butts off, but it was worth it as it saved a lot of time.

Navy...it's not just a job, it's an adventure!

Not much has changed. I spent a year in Deck Division on the USS Jacksonville and another year as leading seamen, the process remains. Makes me wonder about the changes in the paint process and formulation process and how it has changed. We used a two part epoxy that left you with a window for application after mixing and a nice long period to fully dry. A lot of planning was required or there would be much paint wasted. Quite costly paint as I recall.

[LukeFF]

Dave,

Norman Friedman mentions that two boats of the S-42 class received "Mark 14 torpedo directors" in their modernization overhaul in 1943. By that term, does he mean TBTs and if so, how did they feed data to the torpedoes?