Hot Runs
 

I'm a navy vet--kiddy cruised from 1965 to '68. Black Shoe, but not a pig boater. I am interested in the bad new event called a hot run.

I worked--post Nav--with a guy who was in the diesel boats about the time I was in. He told a scary story about a hot run in the forward room.

The torpedo lit off and filled the room with nasty exhaust. Per sched they dogged the door and left the guys there to deal with there maker. Sad story about somebody banging to get out and then dropping quiet. Eternal Father Strong to Save...

Skipper surfaced mo skosh and the opened the torpedo room deck hatch and the dogged door mentioned above. My pal said the gasses blew aft and knocked him out. I think all the squids survived. He thought he was effected much later by CO. I mean carbon monoxide instead the captain. This was told to me in the 1980s? He was kind of ditsy.

Now the question. I read of hot run in the wwii stories, and no mention is made of a gas problem. Who is ****ting us, my old pal, or the people who write the stuff?

My grandpa says that the torpedoes let out a terrible steam or gas when that happened. He served aboard a Balao near the end of WWII and on into the 50's.

Not sure about the WW2 ones but modern torpedoes use a fuel called Otto Fuel that when the torpedo runs emits Hydrogen cyanide very nasty stuff indeed.

Rip

I think as soon as you join the military you are sacrificing your right to live, if your superiors deem it necessary, in favor of obeying orders that can result in your death. Whether you live or die, you have made that sacrifice.

Mystery Solved!!
 

Gotta love the Navy. I have been busy as hell lately at work. Reserve drill weekend, command inspection, renovation conference, etc.

Anyway, the mystery concerning the placement of the Salmon/Sargo class deck torpedo stowage tubes has finally been solved! I picked the brain of the eminent author and historian Jim Christley and sent him digging into his files. He found that the stowage tubes were stacked vertically, two each on either side of the conning tower and the deck gun mount inside the superstructure. They were sited just aft of the large deck hatches that covered the liberty boats. Check out this graphic:


http://i857.photobucket.com/albums/a...g?t=1285361884

To unload the tubes, both boats were removed and placed temporarily in the water alongside. The torpedoes were then extracted from the tubes and into the space left by the boats. They were then hauled up to the deck by the same davit used to move the boats and placed onto the raised torpedo loading skid just forward of the boat hatches. They were then lowered into the torpedo room one by one in the normal fashion.

I had suspected that this was the case. It was the only arrangement that made sense and that would enable the tubes to fit into the superstructure.

This is a perfect example of pre-war submarine design philosophy. A lot of novel features were incorporated into the boats during the 30's that were great for peacetime cruising, but turned out to be near useless liabilities when the shooting started. The boat CO's discovered pretty quickly that these tubes were not going to provide the benefit they were intended for and they were one of the first things to go as the boats were overhauled.

Nice find there!

I do recall reading about the liberty boat launches being done away with fairly quickly once the war began.

Wikipedia!
 

I have spent the last week and a half revising the Wikipedia page on the Gato class submarines. The original was incomplete, misleading, and in some cases completely wrong. I think it will stand the test now. Take a look when you have the chance:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gato_class_submarine

Enjoy!

Great write up!

Well done! :salute:

Davey, brilliant stuff...taxing and stretching here maybe: What about Mk 6 exploders and their impellers? Yes, I saw some stuff waaay back in the thread, but I'm interested in the recent "hot run" post...if a fish were sticking out the tube, stuck, and the impeller was spinning, it seems these revolutions would start to arm it...unless there was a governor that only counted revolutions at a torp's normal speed...??? Thanks

The Mk 6 exploder is actually electrically powered. On the bottom of the exploder mechanism (which actually forms the bottom of the warhead itself) a channel is cut into the body which directs a flow of water over an impeller. The spinning of this impeller drives a small generator and this is what provides the power. Two different safety mechanisms prevent the exploder from firing the warhead until a certain point of travel (I believe it is 400 yards, but don't quote me on that right now)

So in your scenario (which has happened by the way) the fish is stuck part way out of the tube, which means it has only traveled about 10 feet. The exploder isn't yet armed. The impeller and the associated gear train is set up in such a way that only the force of water moving at the weapon's design speed (31-46 knots) would be sufficient to rotate the impeller and arm the torpedo. The speed of the submarine through the water (< 8 knots) would not be enough to rotate the impeller gear train.

Don't get me wrong though. This is a very dangerous situation. The only real solution is to refire the tube and hope the weapon is ejected. If it is in an aft tube, the boat would probably be running at a full bell to accelerate the separation of the boat and the weapon. If in a forward tube, it would be backing down for the same effect.

The following link has a lot of good info on the exploder operation:

http://www.hnsa.org/doc/torpedo/index.htm

I have question on following text from U.S.S. BAYA (SS-318) FOURTH WAR PATROL REPORT27 April 1945 at 0235:
"APR contact on 305 mcs., 200 TRF, strength 5. This contact was followed by jamming which effectively blacked both united of APR and completely blacked SD."

Could someone explain what are APR, mcs, TRF and this "strength 5"? Also what kind of jamming gear Japanese would be using?

EDIT: Okay I missed section where APR was mentioned to be somekind of radio, my bad. Would still like to hear more about it.

Thanks!
Tim

I have a question that has been buggin me for a while.

When watching some of my WWII sub movies, there was a command given that I would like someone to explain to me

"Put a bubble in Safety"

Now the Safety tank was a tank with the same displacement as the conning tower. Its primary use was to compensate for a flooded conning tower in case of an emergency.

As such the Safety Tank was normally kept full of water as it would be common practice to keep the conning tower empty of water. :know:

The Safety Tank could be blown in case emergency buoyancy was needed.

"Put a bubble in Safety"

Is this strictly Hollywood BS?

If not, why would you put a bubble in safety and when would you normally do it?

To this landlubber's tiny mind, putting a bubble in safety means blowing the safety just a tiny bit so that there is mostly water with a small amount of air on the top.... a... well... bubble as it were. Since bubbles can compress is this bubble necessary for safety reasons??

Inquiring minds want to know. :88)

TRF Tuned Radio Frequency http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tuned_r...uency_receiver A type of multi frequency radio receiver. I am not sure what the "200" signifies. I can guess that it is referring to Ohms. But I am just guessing.

MCS - Since MC stands for megacycle, I can guess that MCS means megacycles http://www.acronymfinder.com/Megacyc...-%28MC%29.html These days we use Megaherz (MHZ)

Strength 5 comes from a code used to evaluate the signal strength of voice communication. It is different from the RST code used for Morse Code signals.

When evaluating a voice signal one may use the term "five by five" meaning 5 strength (highest) and 5 clarity (highest). In this case only the strength of the signal was given (5) meaning a very strong signal.

Platapus beat me to a reply with some good info. To add to that, starting in late 1944, some submarines were equipped with the APR series radar detection equipment. It consisted of both a receiver and a pulse analyzer. It served mostly as an early warning set, basically to let the crew know that there was an enemy radar set out there working. Due to the limitations of the gear, getting a bearing was problematic. Later refinements in antenna placement allowed a rough bearing to be obtained, but this often required turning the entire boat.

I would be very surprised to learn that the IJN was using any sort of active jamming gear. This technology was in its infancy and even the USN did not possess it at this point. Probably what the Baya was seeing was unintentional. A Japanese radar operating on a frequency that was close to that of the SD (especially if it was more powerful) would cause interference on the screen and muck up the reception, essentially "jamming" it.

Actually, no it is not BS. I think you are getting tripped up on jargon. "Put a bubble in Safety" actually means partially blowing the tank, emptying part of the tank in an effort to restore positive buoyancy, possibly as a result of battle damage related flooding in another part of the boat. As you noted, the safety tank is normally kept flooded at all times, and would only be emptied to compensate for flooding, usually of the conning tower, but it could be used in any flooding casualty. In this function, it has almost the exact opposite use as the negative tank, which is meant to provided negative buoyancy during the first part of the dive, to get the boat down faster. Once the boat is under, the negative tank is "blown to the mark". This is a predetermined point at which, when emptied to this mark, neutral or a slightly positive buoyancy will be reestablished. The "mark" changes constantly as fuel is used, garbage is thrown overboard, ammo is used up, etc.

Putting a "bubble" in safety would only be done if the boat was having difficulty maintaining neutral or positive buoyancy due to leaks or flooding.

Ah, so putting a bubble in safety is, in fact, adding a little bit more positive buoyancy to the boat?

Would a bubble in safety be put in times where there is no damage?

If the trim analysis for a specific dive were to be "Heavy overall and all right fore and aft", would a remedy be putting a bubble in safety to establish the trim?

(I love this thread, so much to learn, so many willing to teach)

No. Safety, as the name implies, was use only in emergency. Here you would probably pump from the trim tanks to sea.

Platabus and Dave, thank you very much for your answers!

Well done!