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Originally Posted by Kapitan
In fairness yes the Kastroma took a light hit but if you look at the damage to the San fransisco it makes you wonder just how much damage did baton rouge suffer?
I am aware of the HY ratings i did read the Virginia is built along similar lines to the Astute in terms of steel used and pre fabrication methods following on from the Seawolf.
I gathered from many sources that the reason for seawolfs expense wasn't all down to the kit inside it was the hull and many sources pointed to HY130 being used but HY100 is still expensive, as for the Virginias using HY120 this could mean a deeper diving submarine?
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Yep, as far as San Francisco goes, again I think that some of the other factors at play were the reactor. She had just been refueled (plus they had USS Honolulu to get parts from), I'd be willing to guess if she was due for a refueling she'd have most certainly been retired. That's also what I read written on USS Miami, more than likely she would have been repaired if they had a retired sub that they could have sourced some of the parts from, but as the only other 688s to be retired are all older (pre-688I) this was impossible. The other thing I think I remember getting from this is that it certainly wouldn't have been impossible to repair Miami but it was just too expensive, especially if you're paying for it with money that's coming out of your construction budget and setting back one of your new Virginia boats.
On the HY100 front, it depends on what you consider cost but its not really down to the expense of manufacturing the steel (which probably isn't cheap or easy, but as far as I know I haven't heard of any massive quality issues), its the difficulty to work with it when you are talking about welds and what not. I'm not going to claim to know all about the science around it but even HY80 has not been easy to work with and has had lots of issues over the years.
I think it was Greyback or Growler, one of those Regulus boats and it had all kinds of problems. Even before this, one of the Skates (Seadragon?) which used the same type of HTS / HY42 that the later war-built boats used, had all kinds of improper welds in the 50s. This has happened on quite a few occasions, even with some of the 688Is (I think it was Charlotte or Hampton, one of the ones that was involved in a collision and had damage to the sail, when it was inspected it was found that quite a bit of the welds were incorrect/ out of spec and had to be re-done).
The reason I bring all this up is because the Seawolf, while under construction around 1993 or so suffered from massive issues with the welding of HY100, to the point that almost all of what had already been done had to be re-worked, adding probably almost a year to construction time.
Quote:
Originally Posted by shipkiller1
HY-80 has not been used in a long time.. 774 class does not use HY-80.
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Best I know, the last 688Is were still HY-80, so mid 90s but a few of the later ones had some sections made of HY100 just as a feasibility / practicality test.