Quote:
Originally Posted by LukeFF
Great job, as always!  As for the lack of info about Mod2/2A for these boats, I've read through the patrol reports for the Salmon and Sargo class boats and found very little evidence of this mod being applied to these classes. It may be that the majority of these boats simply "jumped' over these early mods and were modified from their original form into Mod 3.
I've not read entirely through the PDF file yet, but did you cover the deck-mounted torpedo containers at all? |
Your conclusion concerning these boats jumping over the Mod 2 and 2A's is entirely plausible. By the time that most of the Salmon/Sargos returned for their first overhauls the Mod 3's were already in vogue and they may have gone from a Mod 1 directly to the Mod 3. As I gather new info like this, I will incorporate it into the articles via revisions.
I puzzled for a bit over why the SJ radar was consistantly mounted on the starboard side of the shears as opposed to forward as in the Gatos. Then it suddenly hit me. In order to get a useful range, the dish had to be mounted fairly high above the water. This height also dictated how high the support bracket for the SJ mast had to be mounted. On the Gatos this was not a problem. The support shear for #1 scope provided the perfect height to mount this bracket. However, on the Salmon/Sargos with their 34 foot #1 scope, this shear was not high enough so the bracket was attached to the #2 scope shear. If they had placed the radar mast in the traditional location forward of the scopes, this support bracket would have been in the way of the #1 scope and would have prevented raising or lowering it. The solution was elegantly simple, attach the SJ bracket to #2 scope shear, just move it out of the way to starboard. This seemed to work quite well, as only 6 of the 16 boats had the radar moved to a "normal" location, even after receiving a 40 foot #1 scope. Interesting
Only one Salmon/Sargo boat had deck mounted, external
launching tubes, the Stingray (SS-186) and I documented that in the article. As for the
stowage tubes that were mounted inside the superstructure forward of the conning tower I have yet to turn up good information on their configuration. The thrust of the article was on visually identifying the boats and since these stowage tubes can not be seen from the outside I did not cover them. However, I have not given up. I am working on obtaining a set of plans for these boats that may show how these tubes were configured. Got to find the dough, though and that is in short supply right now.
Soon I hope!