Most Impressive Interwar Ship (Civil or Military)

[Werner]

I have.

[Laurent]

Hi all ,

I voted "Normandie"

Quite a ship , if you'd ask me ...

a shame she burned and capsized

Some stupid USN officers didn't allow the french "Normandie's" firemen & engineers to go aboard to open the seachests , she would have sunk there and stayed on an even keel ...

It's a shame as you can imagine which part she could have played as a trooper , with the two "Queens" , 10,000 to 15,000 G.I.'s at each rotation , war in Europe could have been ended earlier than May 08 , 1945 ...

Yourkevitch was on the scene as she was afire , no one official has taken the time to hear him , he was her conceiver , he knew everything about "his" ship ...

What about stubborness costing millions of $ in this case ...

Just my thoughts ...

Regards ,

Laurent

[chuck]

I wonder how much a role the Mob had in degrading the quality of the fire fighting efforts.

[Lesforan]

It has always impressed me that the gearbox/turbine combination on warships is so small. Ungeared turbine plants were quite a bit larger, with turbines for high speed operation and turbines for cruising, as well as reverse turbines. The ungeared turbines had to have larger diameter turbine wheels than geared turbines in order to produce sufficient torque.
The introduction of gearboxes allowed reduction gearing to mutiply torque while keeping the turbine in a more-efficient high speed operation.

If you consider each generator as taking the place of a gearbox, compartmentalization could indeed be improved, as shafting would not necessarily have to emanate from, or even line up with, each engine room.

The analogy of the turbine/Diesel electric locomotive is, I think, valid.
In these setups, of which I am very familiar, the control of speed is done by modulating engine rpm. In the diesel application, the engine is governed to operate at one of eight pre-determined rpm levels. The governor will keep engine rpm constant at any given throttle setting regardless of crankshaft load. Rpm/torque combinations are automatically selected according to electrical load by shunting different proportions of current through traction motor armatures and fields.
Reverse direction is accomplished by a simple reversing switch.

The traction motors themselves, one per axle, are in constant gear mesh with their respective axles via a simple pinion/spur gear drive. I would think that ship drive motors could be left in constant mesh as well. A free-wheeling drive axle will not destroy a traction motor. This is often done on purpose in normal train handling. A motor turning in this manner can have its field shorted out through a cooled resistor grid, creating a dynamic brake. A free-wheeling propellor shaft likewise would not damage a drive motor unless the motor was already damaged. In that case, the axle would be locked up. On a locomotive, this is dealt with by cutting the pinion gear with a torch. The locomotive can then proceed to a repair base on its remaining motors.

A ship with this problem would be even easier to deal with. If a shaft would not free-wheel, its screw would simply remain stationary, creating drag but not disabling the ship.

As an aside, the gas turbine locomotives Werner described was the third generation of turbine-electric locomotives used by the Union Pacific Railroad. These consisted of a control cab unit, containing a small diesel engine for use in moving the locomotive on its own without having to fire up the turbine. The second unit contained the turbine itself and a generator. The third unit (not a caboose) was in fact a fuel tender. These locomotives developed 10,000hp. This is more powerful than any individual Diesel locomotive unit. Like Diesels, these locomotives could be operated in mutiple with other turbine locos or conventional diesels.
Some were even operated with steam locomotives, which of course would require their own crews.

Previous generation gas turbine locomotives, as on the UP only, were self-contained in one locomotive unit that could optionally tow a fuel tender (made from a steam locomotive tender).

The first generation UP turbines used steam-driven turbines from onboard boilers and were not operationally successful.

UP also tried an experimental coal-fired turbine electric, using not steam but powdered coal directly fed into the turbine. This developed lots of powder, but fly ash eroded the turbine blades so quickly that the experiement proved impractical.

[Werner]

US Turboelectric battleships or carriers were torpedoed or bombed on 21 separate occasions. The only failure was a five minute interruption aboard Saratoga in 1942.

http://www.navweaps.com/index_tech/tech-038.htm

[Guest]

US Turboelectric battleships or carriers were torpedoed or bombed on 21 separate occasions. The only failure was a five minute interruption aboard Saratoga in 1942.

http://www.navweaps.com/index_tech/tech-038.htm

Vast majority of US turbo-electric battleships that were torpedoed were torpedoed in port, with the ship stationary and the motor not energized. Bombs that fails to penetrate the armor deck or enter and explode in the torpedo defense system is completely irrelevant.

[Werner]

Chuck, again. Read the article.

[Guest]

I did. I am most unimpressed. It invokes several pieces of trivia with no reference at all to the very significant inference to be made from their context in order to justify the position that turbo-electric drive does not suffer from over-all disadvantage.

[Werner]

Why not write your own and submit it to Cadman for rebuttal as a permanent article?

[Werner]

Those 35,000 horsepower turbo pressure fired disasters aboard the Knox took up considerably more room. Perhaps they should have consulted some children.

Pressure firing has nothing to do with the turbine. It's a boiler thing.

Pressure firing works like a blast furnace to get more heat out of a smaller heat source.

Knox class machinery arrangements (fore to aft): Auxiliary Machinery Space (30 feet) - Boiler Room (40 feet) - Engine Room (30 feet). 35,000 SHP.

[Jean-Paul Binot]

I wonder how much a role the Mob had in degrading the quality of the fire fighting efforts.

Why would the Mob want the destruction of Normandie? It seems to me that it is crass incompetence and arrogance on the part of the US Navy officials on site that is entirely to blame. The firemen were if anything overzealous, pouring tons of water into the superstructure of the poor liner until she capsized.

Indeed, since the fire was eventually under control (it apparently never took devastating proportions, contrary to the fires that destroyed several other liners), opening the sea corks would have saved the ship, as the river bed was very shallow under the keel. This might have caused some damage to the hull, as the bottom was uneven, but nothing too serious.

The fire did not destroy Normandie, water and stupidity did.

[Guest]

Pressure firing has nothing to do with the turbine. It's a boiler thing.

Pressure firing works like a blast furnace to get more heat out of a smaller heat source.

Knox class machinery arrangements (fore to aft): Auxiliary Machinery Space (30 feet) - Boiler Room (40 feet) - Engine Room (30 feet). 35,000 SHP.

The turbine, plus all the ducts and ancillary equipment, fits into the 30 foot engine room. The turbine itself was probably not longer than a large dining room table.

[Guest]

I wonder how much a role the Mob had in degrading the quality of the fire fighting efforts.

Why would the Mob want the destruction of Normandie? It seems to me that it is crass incompetence and arrogance on the part of the US Navy officials on site that is entirely to blame. The firemen were if anything overzealous, pouring tons of water into the superstructure of the poor liner until she capsized.

Indeed, since the fire was eventually under control (it apparently never took devastating proportions, contrary to the fires that destroyed several other liners), opening the sea corks would have saved the ship, as the river bed was very shallow under the keel. This might have caused some damage to the hull, as the bottom was uneven, but nothing too serious.

The fire did not destroy Normandie, water and stupidity did.

If the water is shallow, that means the water won't reach up to much beyond the ship's natural waterline, and superstructure fire would be unaffected.

It has persistently been rumored that the Normandie was set ablaze by agents of the New York Mob to demonstrate their capacity to disrupt the war effort in order to extort some sort of war-time truce and concession from the US Government.

[Werner]

It has persistently been rumored that the Normandie was set ablaze by agents of the New York Mob to demonstrate their capacity to disrupt the war effort in order to extort some sort of war-time truce and concession from the US Government.

Persistent stories, much followed, hold about as much weight as the ones about the Stern Gang in Israel. One has to wonder if either has any truth at all.

[Guest]

There is absolutely no reason I can see why such a rumor - that the proximal cause of the fire was an mob sponsored sabotage - couldn't be true.

[Foeth]

If the water is shallow, that means the water won't reach up to much beyond the ship's natural waterline, and superstructure fire would be unaffected.

Duh. But at least you avoid capsizing.

[Vlad]

OK, back on topic guys. I voted Hood because Im a bit of a battlecruiser nut and also because of the world cruises she did showing off the might of the RN and how she became a household name across the world.

While I'm here though, why is Akagi not on the list? surely she deserves as much credit as Lexington, if not more for having those awesome triple flying off decks forward. Ditto Nagato, widely regarded as the best immediately post-war battleship. She was the first battleship to mount 16" guns and set the battleship speed record for the time.

[ar]

It's true about the mob and ther Normandie.
A deal was struck soon after.

It has persistently been rumored that the Normandie was set ablaze by agents of the New York Mob to demonstrate their capacity to disrupt the war effort in order to extort some sort of war-time truce and concession from the US Government.

Persistent stories, much followed, hold about as much weight as the ones about the Stern Gang in Israel. One has to wonder if either has any truth at all.

[Werner]

Maybe we should believe the stories about The Stern Gang.

They were going to raise heck in the way of sabotage and terror in the allied countries in return for Israel after the war, but Hitler said no.

[chuck]

OK, back on topic guys. I voted Hood because Im a bit of a battlecruiser nut and also because of the world cruises she did showing off the might of the RN and how she became a household name across the world.

While I'm here though, why is Akagi not on the list? surely she deserves as much credit as Lexington, if not more for having those awesome triple flying off decks forward. Ditto Nagato, widely regarded as the best immediately post-war battleship. She was the first battleship to mount 16" guns and set the battleship speed record for the time.

The Japanese were secretive. This has adverse consequences on the visibility of their ships and impression they are likely to generate worldwide. The only major Japanese warship to make anything like the international visibility tours of the Hood and Lexington was the Heavy cruiser Nachi (or one of her class, I may be mistaken about the actual ship), hardly the type of ship to make a Hood like splash.