Making Steam the RN Way

I had a few old posts on this subject.

A-type boilers were definitely a prewar design in the USN.

The Russian Navy Needs to Have a Propulsion Examining Board

As an old steam engineer, let me say this: There is no excuse for an oil-fired warship in good condition to send up black smoke, especially in this quantity.

Shit, coal-fired ships often didn't smoke that badly.

The smoke suggests to me that either the plant design or the snipes of the Admiral Kuznetsov suck. Proper naval boilers have economizers; the hot flue gasses from the boiler fires pass over the economizer tubes to pre-heat the feedwater prior to it being fed into the boiler. The fuel savings of economizers are significant, something like 10%, but that level of efficiency can't be achieved if the economizer tubes and their vanes are covered with soot.

Even if the ship was "blowing tubes" (using steam to blow the soot from boiler tubes), for that much soot to be blown off indicates that the plant is running too rich a mixture. There should be no smoke visible from a properly-fired naval boiler.

This article may overstate things, but I am prepared to believe that the Kuznetsov is a piece of shit.

Lube Oil

Most of the rotating equipment in engineering, from the reduction gears to small pumps, was lubricated with a light oil known as 2190TEP. It was a fairly light-looking oil.

Oil samples were supposed to be taken daily. Sample jars were kept in three-tiered racks that sort of looked like this two-tiered one:

If my memory serves me, the top rack was for a sample of the oil that was put into the machinery on the last oil change. The next bottle down was the oil sample for that day, which was marked with a china marker (date, time and initials of the sample-puller). The third bottle was for the previous day's sample. The rack was kept in public view within the machinery space, where everyone could see it. One could then see that the samples were being pulled properly and whether or not there was any contamination of the samples.

Keeping the sample racks current was a sign of how squared-away the engineers were. It was amazing how many ships weren't. I know of one case where the engineer of a really new Spruance sent his senior engineers for tours of an Adams-class DDG in order to see how to do things properly.

If you were one of the squadron's lackeys, noticing that the sampling wasn't being done properly was an indicator that maybe the engineering department deserved closer scrutiny. Which was a version of the "500 yard rule" (if the ship didn't look good from 500 yards away, there were problems).

Guess the Gizmo

Cross-posted from EBM

Casualty Power

Many years ago, I made a reference to electricians rigging casualty power. I really don't have much to say about it, but here goes.

Ships had lots of casualty power risers and bulkhead pass-throughs. In my day, they looked like this:

This is a bulkhead pass-through:

And this is a riser, which connects different decks:

On the distribution route for casualty power, there was a terminal at either end of a given compartment. Cables would be broken out and strung between the terminals.

The principle was simple: Each cable had three terminal ends to it, because the lines were transmitting 440 volt three-phase power. You connected A to A, B to B, and C to C, and then tightened the cables' connection into the terminals with those little wrenches. You would run the wires from the load to the source, so that you were always connecting and disconnecting dead wires. The ends of the cables had o-rings or twine wrapped around them so you could identify them in the dark: One loop for A and so on. Only electricians could do anything with casualty power lines, because of the hazards of using them.

Each ship was supposed to have a "Casualty Power Bill" to set forth the procedure for using the casualty power system. I suspect that was one bill that was drawn up during pre-commissioning, validated at the first refresher-training session, and then never touched.

It took many decades (and long after I was out), for NavSea to figure out that color-coding the damn things might be a better idea, as connecting the A wire to the B terminal was a bad thing:

Supposedly they've since tried to sailor-proof them with connectors that can only be installed one way:

The cables were supposed to be strung from the overhead, in order to keep sailors from tripping over them. A close eye was to be kept on the cables to ensure that they didn't start smoking or burning due to overloading or any defects in the cables.

While the electricians would occasionally drill with rigging and un-rigging the cables, in all of my time, I never once saw them actually energize the things. They were, in essence, a bunch of 440v extension cords that could handle between 100 and 200 amps and nobody, but nobody, really wanted to fuck around with that much live power.

Stick-Shift Boilers

(Might want to read this first.)

Let's say that you're on a steam ship and the order comes down to increase speed. The throttleman in the engine room acknowledges the bell change and opens the throttle. More steam is admitted to the turbines and they spin faster.

The real fun is in the fire room. When the throttle is opened, the first thing that happens is that steam pressure drops in the main steam line. Because of that drop in pressure, the level of water in the boiler goes up. But that's just a momentary reaction.

In response to the lower steam pressure, the automatic combustion control (ACC) on a modern 1,200lb. steam plant[1] did three things and, in a well-maintained system, did them very well: It would add water to the boiler, increase the firing rate at the burner front and speed up the forced draft blowers. The Burnerman would, as ordered by the Boiler Tech of the Watch (BTOW), cut in more burners.

The Blowerman (or "Lower Levelman") would, if ordered, start an additional forced-draft blower. Each boiler had two blowers, but in normal peacetime steaming, only one blower per boiler would be running.

It took the boiler techs a long time to come to Jesus on ACC systems. There was a special Naval Enlisted Classification code for an ACC technician. One of the things that got Insurv riled up was the failure of surface ships to properly set up, maintain and run ACC systems. When things like that happen, the way that the surface line community[2] handles things is to publicly fire people until everyone gets the message.

The thing was, of course, that the senior boiler technicians had learned their jobs on World War Two-era ships. Those ships had 600lb. steam plants that were manually controlled. The Upper Levelman stood watch by the boiler water-level gauge glasses and he controlled the rate that feedwater was added to the boiler. The Burnerman controlled both the number of burners and the amount of fuel oil that was fed to the burner front. The Blowerman controlled the speed of the blowers.

So now the Throttleman opens up the throttle. The Upper Levelman sees the water level rise in the gauge glass, but he knows that is a temporary effect, so he makes ready to add feedwater. The Burnerman sees the boiler's pressure drop, he increases the firing rate. The Blowerman speeds up his blowers to feed more air to the firebox.

Those three men, naturally, were told what the speed change was and they could react based on experience. But the Blowerman and Burnerman rarely were able to harmonize exactly during big speed changes. Given the choice between too little air and too much air, the Blowerman always opted for too little. Too little air meant that the boiler would emit black smoke out of the stack. Too much air and the boiler would emit white smoke. White smoke was finely atomized fuel and, as you might suspect, a white smoke condition was dangerous: You would get a fuel-air buildup in the upper works of the boiler and the stack and then, if it were not brought under control quickly, very bad things would happen.[3]

Ships with boilers that had tuned ACC systems didn't emit smoke on power changes. If a boiler that was run on an ACC emitted smoke on a power change, that was a sign that the ACC wasn't working properly.[4] So if you see photos or video of a Navy steam-powered warship blasting out smoke as she accelerated, you probably were seeing a ship with a stick-shift plant.
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[1]"Modern" being "post Korean War".
[2] Our motto: "We Eat Our Young".
[3] The rule was that if white smoke couldn't be eliminated in a minute or less, the boiler's fires were pulled and the boiler wrapped up.
[4] There was a test called a "boiler flex" in which the Throttleman would rapidly spin the throttle open or shut in order to change the steam demand across 80% of the boiler's operating range, in order to stress-test the ACC system. This was an OPPE fail item.

A/C Boundaries

Ships are divided up by air-conditioning boundaries, which in civilian life, are often called "heating zones." Each area had its own fanroom that supplied either cooled or heated air, depending on the season. The zones were divided by interior bulkheads and there were doorways with joiner doors on pneumatic closures to permit passage between the zones.

XOs were often pinging on the department heads to keep the joiner doors in their spaces in good working order. If the passageway on one side of the door was maintained by a different division than the passageway on the other side of the door, the door belonged to whichever division maintained the space into with the door opened.

Some of those joiner doors took a hell of a beating. The pneumatic door closers in the Navy supply system didn't seem to be up to the job. The closers got pulled off and fixed or replaced and then mounted back so many times that the base metal under them gave out from the strain.

If you wanted to see real hell on earth, try running a set of gas-welding lines through an a/c boundary when it was hot or cold out, especially if that open door was at the edge of Officer Country. The XO would want to know why those lazy-ass HTs couldn't be bothered to move the gas bottles closer to where they were working (or use a portable rig). When there was serious repair work going on where the doors had to be rigged open, if not removed, XOs often went into max-fret mode.

And if you wanted to see real fireworks, watch what happened when an XO began harping about air-conditioning boundaries on a Chief Engineer who was dealing with a boiler casualty or who had an OPPE coming up in three weeks.

Still, if you wanted to keep the ship either heated or cooled, air-conditioning boundaries had to be respected.

Helpful Guidance From the Afloat Staff

This is no shit[1]:

There was a task group of warships heading into Yokosuka, Japan. One of the double-ended cruisers had had a boiler casualty and was sort of limping in on one screw. The demineralizer in one of the plants had failed and, instead of removing minerals from the condensate coming from the main engine, had dumped minerals into the feed water system. That salts up a boiler faster than you can think of it.

Besides replacing the resin guts in the demineralizer, the affected plant has to be washed out with copious amounts of fresh water, then rinsed with a citric-acid based wash, and then rinsed again. It was that cruiser's dumb luck that she was steaming all four boilers at the time, which meant that both boilers in the affected plant had to be opened up and cleaned.

After the engineers had stopped steaming the salted-up plant, the Chief Engineer recommended to the Captain that he place the ship on water hours. "Water hours" meant that unless you were a cook or you were covered in grease and oil, you didn't get to take a shower. And you might as well wear the same uniform for awhile, as the ship's laundry was also secured. It didn't take very long until the inside of the ship smelled like a locker room.

The plan that the Engineer recommended to the Captain was to do all of the flushing of the salted boilers at sea, so that they wouldn't have to worry about disposing of the water used to flush the boilers.[2] Once in port, where a Culligan truck was available, they would then close out the boilers and hydrostatically test them.[3]

All of this, of course, was the subject of a CASREP and follow-on updates. So nobody could say that anyone in the staffs wasn't informed.

So now it's a little after 2300, two days before the task group is to arrive. One of the bright young lads on the embarked staff on the aircraft carrier got on the secure UHF circuit[4], called over to the cruiser and asked to speak to the Engineer. CIC called down to Engineering. The EOOW called the Engineer in his stateroom and told him that he was wanted on the Red Phone.

The Engineer was not happy. It seemed as though he was going to be able to get a good six hours' of uninterrupted rack time, which was almost unheard-of. So he pulled on his filthy uniform and went up to Combat. The CICWO pointed to the correct handset. The Engineer picked it up. The conversation went about like this:

"Staff, Cruiser, Chief Engineer speaking. Over."

"Staff here. Due to the sensitivity surrounding discharges from warships, we want to make sure that you complete your boiler flushing well before we enter Japanese waters. Over"

In the cruiser's CIC, sailors swore that they could see smoke wisping from the Engineer's ears. He keyed the handset and responded. "Cruiser, Engineer here. We had no idea that there would be any political ramifications from intentionally dumping pollutants into Japanese waters. It never occurred to us that they might not approve of it. We will take that into account and make sure that we finish well before then. Anything further? Over."

"Staff, roger, thank you. Out."

Supposedly, the bright one on the staff was pleased with himself, until it was gently pointed out to him that the Engineer's response was heavily laced with sarcasm. By breakfast the following morning, every engineering officer throughout the task group was laughing about it.

The watch in the cruiser's CIC held their laughs until the Chief Engineer had left Combat, slamming the door behind him.
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[1] Some details have been changed to protect the guilty, at least one of whom is still on active duty
[2] Why there was such concern over dumping water that had salt and/or diluted citric acid was more a matter of politics than science.
[3] Any time you opened up a boiler, you had to hydro it. High-pressure steam leaks are bad news.
[4] Also known as the "Red Phone", from the color of the remote stations in CIC and the Bridge.

CHT

Ships routinely discharged their wastes overboard. By that, I mean that if you flushed a toilet, what you flushed went through the sewage lines and out a discharge set just above the waterline. For all I know, it may still be that way.

But when people began to become concerned about pollution, attention inevitably turned to the Navy's ships, which were sitting at anchor or tied up to the pier and discharging raw sewage into the harbors and coastal waterways. That had to stop. The first thing that happened was that the piers were outfitted with sewage lines. The ships were re-piped so that instead of simply discharging sewage over the side, ships in port would pump their waste to the pier lines. This was not so simple, as the pier discharge lines were higher up than the overboard discharge ports, so that sewage pumps had to be fitted to some ships.

Then came the issue of transiting coastal waters. Ships were fitted with tanks, called CHT tanks. CHT stood for, depending on whom you asked "collection, holding and transfer" or "contaminated holding and treatment". The tanks were sized to hold several hours worth of waste. The hammer for making sure that the tanks were used was that the captains and chief engineers could be held personally responsible by the Coast Guard for any discharge of untreated wastes.[1] And some poor saps did have to pay the fines.[2]

After a ship cleared coastal waters, the sewage drains would be aligned to go back overboard and the CHT tanks were flushed out and pumped out. The navigator was responsible for determining when the ship was far enough out to sea.[3] Of course, it wasn't the navigator who had to pay the fine if the word to cut the sanitary drains overboard was given too early.

When the Navy began to send ships on goodwill cruises along the Great Lakes, some people noticed at first that it was almost always the same ships that were sent. That was because those ships had to have greatly increased CHT capacity in order to hold their wastes for the time it took to steam from one port to another.[4]

The sewage system and the CHT tanks were maintained by the HTs, which earned them the nickname "shitter techs". The CHT pumps could be a nightmare and if they failed, then raw sewage backed up into the shower drains in the heads that were on the low points of the system. And that would make the XO very, very cranky.
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[1] The fines were about $25,000 per incident.
[2] Paying them off at $250 a month for a hundred months sort of put a crimp in one's cash flow.
[3] A by-product of the requirement to not pump wastes overboard in port was that the age-old practice of using anchorages in home port came to an end.
[4] They also needed permission from the Canadian government, as the Great lakes were demilitarized under the Rush-Bagot Treaty of 1818.

Ship's Boats

Destroyers and cruisers traditionally had two boats[1]. Both were powered by small diesel engines.

They were the Captain's Gig:

And the 26' Motor Whaleboat (this one was sold as surplus):

Boats were used primarily when the ship was anchored somewhere, though in far rarer occasions, they were used for "blue water" transfers between ships in the open sea. They were hoisted onto the ship and lowered by davits. The davits were double armed affairs that held the boats on cradles when they were not used. When in use, the davit would lift the boat up, tilt down so that the boat was over the water, and then lower the boat on pulleys (called "falls").

When the boats were being raised and lowered, only the bare crew was on the boat and they were required to hold onto the monkey lines (ropes with knotted hand-holds). For one end of the boat could slip off a fall and yes, they occasionally did.

The davits were powered by large electric motors which had limit switches to prevent the motors from breaking things. The motors wound and unwound the wire rope winches on the davits. The limit switches, though, were sitting right out there open to the salt air and they sometimes failed. When they did, the winch motors could wind things a little too tight and bend the living shit out of the davit arms.

During good weather, these boats had a three-man crew: A coxswain, a seaman and an engineman. The seaman and engineman handled lines fore and aft. In bad weather or at night, a boat officer was added, usually the junior-most ensigns in the duty section.

The motor whaleboat was pretty straight forward. The coxswain drove the boat from the steering station next to the motor. The motor had a straight shaft that ran right to the prop.

The gig was, comparatively, a maintenance nightmare. The engine was at the rearmost part of the boat. The driveshaft went forward into a "v-drive", which in turn drove the prop shaft. The housing of the v-drive was made of aluminum. There was no way to get to the bottom of the v-drive other than pulling it out. Aluminum corrodes nicely in seawater, which tends to get into the bilges of boats. So what would happen is that the bottom of the v-drive would swiss-cheese itself from corrosion, the oil would leak out of the v-drive and, if that was not caught, the goddammed thing would seize up.

The gig was the captain's boat and it was at his beck-and-call. A considerate captain would let his gig be used as a liberty launch for at least the chiefs and the officers, if not for the entire crew. It was incumbent upon those who were returning to the ship and who were really drunk to pass up on riding in the gig, as captains took a dim view of squids puking their guts out in the gig's cabin.

When boats were in use, a beach party with a radio was sent ashore for controlling the sailors at the landing point. The petty officer or officer there reported to the OOD. Anyone who was really drunk might have to wait for hours there until they sort of sobered up. The beach party also functioned as a security checkpoint, welcoming and screening visitors to the ship. The boats took their orders from either the beach party or the OOD.

When boats were in use, the senior line officer in the boat was in charge, even if an officer was assigned to the boat and even if that senior line officer was drunk on his ass. More than a few drunk lieutenants got into serious trouble after an incident when someone else on the boat was injured. ("Line officer", in this regard, meant that one was in a warfare specialty eligible for command at sea.)

 It was common to hire water taxis when visiting foreign ports.



This served several functions. First off, it freed the ships from having to crew and operate their own boats. Second, it provided some work for the local charter boats, which meant there was some more interest in having naval ships visit. Third, because they were foreign vessels, the ship's officers were not responsible for safety of the water taxi.

Anchoring out was done in ports that either had limited pier/dock/wharf space (or the port wanted to reserve the space for freighters and cruise ships) or were too shallow for the ships to pull in. Most everyone hated anchoring out and using the boats. It was a strain on the duty sections. Boat crews were required to wear the uniform of the day, which meant trashing a set of whites in the summer.[2] Boating operations could be hazardous, especially if the weather was up. Boating might be secured,[3] which meant that you could find yourself stuck on shore for awhile.

A wise sailor on liberty made sure that he or she had enough money set aside to rent a cheap hotel room in case the weather soured. Worse case was when the weather really soured and the ship had to get under way to the relative safety of the open sea. It was not unheard-of for half of the crew to be stranded ashore for a few days, an event that would involve the local consulate/embassy to help out in caring for the strandees.

[1]Carriers and other large ships had personnel boats that were much larger. The admiral commanding a task group would also have his own boat, known as "the admiral's barge."
[2]Working uniform might be authorized if the weather was getting lousy, but that was not to be counted upon.
[3] "To secure" in the Navy meant "to end an evolution and tidy up." In the Navy, "to secure a building" meant to sweep down the halls, empty the trash, turn out the lights and lock the doors. To the Army, "secure the building" meant to post a guard at the front door. To the Marines, "secure the building" meant to attack the building, blow a hole in the side, go in and kill or capture everyone inside. To the Air Force, "secure a building" meant to negotiate and sign a lease for the building.

Water, Water, Everywhere Nor Any Drop to Drink

(Followup to this post from November)

This is a diagram that I found on the Intertubes of a multi-stage distillation unit. The principle is the same for Navy ones.

Seawater comes in (though I don't recall chemicals being added). Note that the incoming seawater is fed through coils of piping inside each of the chambers. The water that had flashed to steam condenses on the outside of the coils and then drips into the collection pans. In so doing, the seawater coming into the distillation unit pick up a little bit of heat. Each successive stage of the unit is at a lower internal pressure, which means steam condenses at a lower temperature, which is also why the seawater/cooling water lines run opposite to the flow of the brine in the condenser.

After picking up some heat in the condensation coils, the seawater coming in is heated to near-boiling. The steam ejector, shown on the upper right corner, is used to draw a partial vacuum in each chamber. As I described in the earlier post, the hot seawater is pumped into the first stage, where some of it flashes to steam. The steam condenses, the condensate is collected, and the now-slightly-briny water goes to the second stage and the third stage. Each successive stage has more of a vacuum, the brine boils at lower and lower temperatures and more fresh water is made.

The output of the ejector is contaminated somewhat with salt, so the steam waste is not recovered. The brine exiting the distillation unit is pumped overboard.

Water, Water, Every Where Nor Any Drop to Drink

Ships do not carry enough water to sustain all of the ship's requirements until they reach port. Ships distill their fresh water from seawater.

The process is called flash distilling. Seawater is heated to nearly boiling temperatures and pumped into a distillation chamber. The chamber is at a lower pressure than atmospheric pressure. Water boils at a lower temperature when atmospheric pressure is reduced; some of the heated seawater flashes to steam, that steam is collected and condensed into fresh water. The remaining water is pumped to a second distillation chamber, which is of a lower pressure, and more of the water flashes to steam. The water is then pumped to a third and final chamber and the process is repeated. The remaining water, or brine, is now far more salty than seawater; it is pumped back into the sea. The heat of the brine is not wasted. It flows through a heat exchanger to help heat the incoming water.

Once an evaporator was operating, it would not be shut down until the plant was shut down. A typical small steam-powered combatant would make 12,000 gallons of fresh water per evaporator (two evaps per plant). The rule of thumb was that 12,000 gallons per day went to the engineering plant as feed water to make up for steam leaks and for use in steam atomization of the boiler fuel. The other 12,000 gallons per day was supposed to be potable water which was used for "hotel use": Cooking, cleaning, dishwashing, showers, drinking water, bug juice and, of course, coffee.

As each potable water tank was ready to be used, the ship's corpsman had to test the water in the tank. Seawater in a port or near land was considered to be contaminated by sewage and fecal matter. It could be used, in theory, but heavy doses of bad-tasting chemicals were required to ensure the water was healthy. In practice, to avoid having to heavily treat potable water made from contaminated seawater, fresh water from the evaporators was not "cut into" the potable water tanks until the ship was well out to sea. If a ship was anchored out, a freshwater barge would resupply the ship each day.

Each day, as part of the Twelve O' Clock Reports to the Captain, the Engineering Report listed the amount of fresh waster and feed water on hand, both in gallonage and percentage (and also gave the statistics on fuel used, received and on hand). If the percentage of fresh water was too low, then "water hours" would be initiated. The newer and smaller steam ships made more water than they could use; the potable water and feed water tanks were generally topped off by 0200 each day and the evaporators' output would be piped back into the sea until the work day started.

Older ships were perennially on the edge of having to ration water. Engineering plants developed leaks as they aged and even the most energetic maintenance program could not keep a large steam plant in "as new" condition. Over time, sensors and weapons were added to every ship, which resulted in ever-larger crews.[1] A ship unlucky enough to carry a destroyer squadron staff or a flag staff had even more people using fresh water.

I knew of one cruiser captain who decided to make Sunday a working day at sea. When the XO told the department heads, the Chief Engineer quickly collected a few weeks' worth of water reports, which showed that the ship began each Monday with 100% fresh water and began each Sunday with 60% fresh water; the fact that nobody was using water to do heavy cleaning or maintenance on any given Sunday allowed the ship to refill the potable water tanks. As the Cheng explained to the Captain, if Sunday was a working day, by the following Friday, the ship would be on water hours and it would take several days to recover.

The Captain canceled his plans to work the crew that Sunday.

[1]The LAMPS equipped ships were hardest hit, as the LAMPS detachments had thirty people in them. Those ships were designed to operate drones with a much smaller maintenance team. The helicopter itself required frequent showers of fresh water for corrosion control. Chief Engineers were known to regard the LAMPS detachments as water-sucking vermin.

Stupid Engineering Tricks

Engineers had a series of checklists and diagrams that made up the two parts of the book on running a steam plant. The procedures for normal operation made up the Engineering Operational Sequencing System, or EOSS. The emergency procedures made up the Engineering Casualty Control System, or ECCS, and they were practiced by a set of exercises known as the Basic Engineering Casualty Control Exercises, or BECCEs.

BECCEs often involved wrapping up the engineering plant, which was no big deal in a twin-screw ship, as you practiced on one plant and steamed the other. On single-screw ships, it was a big deal, as doing boiler drills meant the ship went "hot, dark and quiet" at different times during the drills. For that reason, the XOs wanted BECCEs to be done on the midwatch, so that the flickering of power "wouldn't upset the ship's routine."

Engineers hated midwatch BECCEs. The engineering training team, which ran the BECCEs, had to be off-watch in order to run them. Both the officers and the sailors on the training team could count on maybe getting three hours of sleep on a BECCE night. Worse, to my mind, was the message that midwatch BECCEs sent to the engineers, which was "your drills are not as important as anyone else's". Operations and Weapons drills were run during the day; the only routinely run engineering drill that was run during the day was a main-space fire drill, as that drill took the ship to GQ.

I did see one time when a ship I was on ran BECCEs after lunch. The engineers were awed, even flattered, that their drills were being run during the working day. It was a simple thing, but it made a huge impact on their morale. The XO, though, was ripshit about the disruption to the work day of having the power go on and off as generators were taken offline and brought online.

The dumbest thing that the surface navy did to the engineers, though, was the "outchop OPPE", the "Operational Power Plant Examination" that was held as the ships steamed back from the Mediterranean for home. OPPE (the West Coast pukes called them OPRES, with the R for "readiness") were the major engineering inspection. Everything was examined, from training records and administrative records to normal steaming and casualty control drills. That meant that the engineers had to be be at their best as everyone else was mentally gearing up for coming home. Worse, the frigates who had towed array sonars almost always had their arrays out underway; they were reluctant to do full BECCEs because of the risk of damage from stopping while having an array out and the captains did not want to take the time to recover the array before the BECCEs and then deploy it afterwards.

To cut to the chase: On that series of outchop OPPEs, every twin-screw ship passed their OPPE. Every single-screw ship failed. From what I heard, life on those ships that failed was not much fun for the next few months.

No other major inspection was done in the Navy that way. Only the engineers had to spend their deployed time training and preparing for a major inspection. This sent a message to the engineers that their time, their work, was not as valued as the other departments, that their training and readiness was less important to the Navy, so let's just work the engineers harder on deployment so as to not take any time when the ships were home.

The message was received loud and clear.

Propulsion Expediency

Steam powered warships are driven by two large turbines per shaft. Steam is admitted to the turbines by the throttle valve. Steam is coming from the main steam loop at 1,175 psi and 950 degrees. First, steam goes into the high-pressure turbine. This image shows two such turbines at a factory:


Steam is admitted into the center of the turbine and flows towards either end. Since as the steam flow drops in pressure as it expands through each stage of the turbine, the blades get bigger as you look towards either end of the turbine. The really large blades at the end are the astern elements used for backing down.

Then steam goes to the low-pressure turbine. The blades are of different design, designed to extract work from steam at (you guessed it) lower pressures. Steam that came out of the main steam loop at very high temperatures and pressures is exhausted into the main engine condenser at a near-perfect vacuum of 29" Hg and 110degF.



The turbines are connected to a set of double reduction gears:


The gears are a lot larger than this drawing implies. You can crawl into the oil sump of the gears. The big gear is the "bull gear," which is connected to the screw (propeller) shaft. They are double-helix gears to prevent gear lash and absorb the massive amount of horsepower being transmitted.

Reduction gears are very heavy, are very carefully machined and are very expensive. The access ports to the reduction gears are locked with the same type of locks used to secure weapons magazines. Lead anti-tamper seals are then affixed to each port. Both the sealing crimp and the lock keys are in the personal custody of the Chief Engineer, who must personally inspect the reduction gears prior to closing the access ports and then personally lock and seal the access ports.

During the Second World War, the companies that made steam turbines and reduction gears could not keep up with the number of warships being produced. The Navy decided that the use of steam turbines and reduction gears would be limited to fast destroyers, cruisers, battleships and carriers. The Casablanca class escort carriers used reciprocating steam engines, which why those carriers had a top speed of 20 knots. Many of the destroyer escorts were powered by large electric motors powered by diesel generators, in the same matter as a diesel locomotive.

The Navy went back to steam propulsion for destroyer escorts after World War II, with the exception of the four ships of the Claud Jones class, which were diesel-electric as a cost-saving measure, and which were gotten rid of by the Navy as soon as the Navy could justify doing so. Destroyer escorts were reclassified to frigates in 1975.

Steam ruled the destroyer escorts/frigates until 1974, when the last steam escort, USS Moinester (FF-1097), joined the Fleet. The Perry class, the only class of frigates built in the last thirty years, is powered by gas-turbines.

Damage Control Organization- the Repair Lockers

In an earlier post, I discussed the maintenance of damage control equipment on a divisional level. In this post, I will discuss the major location of damage control equipment, the Repair Locker. For the purposes of this discussion, I will consider a medium-sized warship, such as a destroyer, frigate or guided-missile cruiser.

Repair lockers contain the heavy damage control equipment and supplies. That is where you find dewatering equipment, shoring tools, portable cutting torches, oxygen level testers, axes, portable communications gear, hammers, just about everything needed for emergencies. The equipment in the repair lockers is maintained by R division. There are three repair lockers on the ship: Repair 2, Repair 5 and Repair 3. Repair 2 covers the forward part of the ship, Repair 5 covers the engineering spaces and Repair 3 covers the after part of the ship. If assistance has to be given to another ship (typically, in port), the Rescue and Assistance Detail operates out of Repair 3.

Each duty section in port has to have enough people in it to fully man both a repair team and a full security detail. At sea, emergencies that are severe enough to require handling from a repair locker are cause to go to battle stations. A report of a fire will trigger setting General Quarters (battle stations).

Repair lockers are manned from divisions shipwide. The Repair Locker Leaders, both in port and at sea, are generally from R Division. The first aid teams at the Repair Lockers are not the ship's corpsmen; the first aid teams stabilize injured personell and transport them to Sick Bay. (This, by the way, is a significant difference between civilian first aid and military first aid: Military first aid involves getting the injured out of the way, civilian first aid involves stabilizing the injured people in place until the paramedics come.) Repair 5 is staffed with engineers, as they will have to verify that the equipment in the space is shut down and, if necessary, do that task.

(A compartment, in Navy speak, is also referred to as a "space.")

The Repair Locker Leader stays at the Repair Locker to coordinate the casualty attack. The sailor in charge at the scene is the On-Scene Commander. Ideally, everyone in a repair team is cross-trained to be able to handle various jobs. Investigators go to the spaces surrounding the damaged area to check for collateral damage. Nozzlemen and hosemen fight the fires. Overhaulers take care of hot spots once the fire is out. Electricians cut power to the space(s) in question and rig casualty power (more on that another time). IC men run phone wires to set up communications between the On-Scene Commander and the Repair Locker Leader. There are sailors who test for explosive gasses and oxygen levels; until those conditions are safe, everyone in the space has to breathe using oxygen breathing gear.

At sea, the Repair Locker Leader reports to the Damage Control Assistant in DC Central. In port, the Repair Locker Leader reports to the Officer of the Deck.

Damage Control Conditions

There are several different conditions of damage control readiness. Let’s take them from “least ready” to “most ready” and then tack on an exception.

Damage control conditions are identified by a letter. The letters are pronounced using the World War II phonetic alphabet. Damage control fillings are those openings between compartments and decks, other than piping systems.

If the ship is in a condition that requires a certain class of fitting to be closed and you need to open it, you must obtain permission and enter the exception into the Damage Control Log. The DC Log is kept in Damage Control Central at all times underway and during working hours in port. If there is no DCC watch in port, after working hours, the DC Log will be kept on the Quarterdeck.

CONDITION X-RAY: X-Ray fittings are always closed. All other fittings may be open and closed at will.

CONDITION YOKE: Yoke and X-Ray fittings are closed. This is the condition that is set in-port after working hours. Condition Yoke is generally set at-sea, but on a calm day, the ship may downgrade to Condition X-Ray to facilitate getting work done.

CONDITION DOG ZEBRA: Dog Zebra fittings are identified by a red “D” surrounding a black “Z”. Dog Zebra fittings are closed during Condition Zebra and also at sunset when the word is passed to “Set `Darken Ship’,” which is set while the ship is underway. You should not see any light emanating from a warship that is underway at night, other than the required navigation lights (this does not apply to aircraft carriers, which are lit up like a Vegas casino). Dog Zebra is set during Condition Yoke, obviously, they would be closed anyway during Condition Zebra.

CONDITION ZEBRA: Almost all fittings on the ship are closed. Condition Zebra is set during battle stations. Besides doors and hatches, wastewater drain lines are closed.

CONDITION CIRCLE WILLIAM: Circle William is only set during an alert against an attack by nuclear, biological and chemical weapons. Circle William is generally only set at battle stations. All air vents into the ship are closed. On a steam ship, you do not want to do this for very long, as the air temperatures in the firerooms will approach 140degF.

CONDITION WILLIAM: William fittings are always left open unless there is a specific need to shut one. These are things such as the seawater intakes and discharges to the condensers, the seawater intakes to the firepumps and the evaporators and the air intakes to the boilers.

The exception is fittings marked with a letter with a circle; Circle X-Ray and so on. You may open a circle fitting, pass through it, and then close it without permission. Hatches are generally Zebra fittings; the scuttles set into the hatches are generally Circle X-Ray fittings. The pass-through scuttles in the gun magazines, where powder and projectiles are passed from the magazines to the handling room are generally Circle X-Ray. Most such fittings are marked Circle X-Ray, a few interior watertight doors may be Circle Zebra, but those are rare and are usually located in the superstructure.

Damage Control Organization: the DCPO

This post will begin the topic of damage control readiness. There were several facets to damage control readiness. In-port damage control was different from at-sea damage control. There were differences between who maintained the major stores of damage control equipment and who maintained the damage control equipment that was scattered about the ship. This post will talk about the latter point: Shipwide damage control maintenance.

Every part of the ship was sectioned off into the responsibilities of different divisions, which was generally done during pre-commissioning and then set in stone for the life of the ship. Generally, if a space contained mainly the equipment or machinery of a division, that division maintained the space, including all of the damage control equipment in the space. On a bulkhead of every space was a sign which gave the space designation (another time) and the division responsible.

That division was responsible for the cleanliness and preservation of that space and any fanrooms that had an access door into the space (“fanrooms” were part of the HVAC system, they were where the vent fans and heat exchangers were located, they were also a place to go hide to cop a nap). That division had to maintain the damage control equipment in the space, which included fire extinguishers, fire hoses, doors and, most importantly, watertight closures. Of course, there were watertight doors and hatches at bulkheads and decks that were the boundary lines between divisions. The rule here was that if the hatch or door opened into your space, you owned it.

One or two sailors from each division was assigned the full-time job of maintaining the damage control equipment in the division. The sailors were known as “Damage Control Petty Officers” and they served six-month tours as DCPOs. Other than their watches, the DCPOs worked for the Damage Control Assistant. The DCA and the senior enlisted of R division supervised the work of the DCPOs. The DCPOs also were spot-checked by their regular division officer.

Some of the work was relatively easy. Fire extinguishers had to be periodically weighed. Fire hoses had to be hydrostatically tested, but not terribly often, and the test dates were stenciled on the hoses. The DCPOs biggest headaches were the doors.

(By the way: "Hatches" are openings between decks, you climb up and down through a hatch. "Doors" are openings between compartments located on the same deck, you walk through a door. "Scuttles" are small round openings that you have to squeeze through; they are generally set in hatches, but not always. Calling a "door" a "hatch" is a landsman's mistake.)

The worst headache were the non-watertight doors, known as “joiner doors.” Most joiner doors had hydraulic door closers on them, just as you’d find on a screen door. Some of them were opened and closed several hundred times a day and they just got beat to shit. They were also high-visibility items for the XO, who would get viciously sarcastic if they were not working.

Closing a watertight door or hatch was known as “dogging it down.” Watertight hatches were dogged down by bolts that swung up from the hatch combing to engage recesses in the hatch. Obviously, hatches could not be opened from below, so every hatch had a scuttle in it that could be opened from either side. The scuttles were generally 18" in diameter; if you were too fat to fit through a scuttle, that could be a real problem. Hatches inside the ship were left open unless the ship was at battle stations. It took at least two sailors to safely open and close a hatch, as one had to hold the hatch up while the other either connected or disconnected the two metal poles that held the hatch open. (To prevent the support poles from being jarred lose, they were held in place with toggle pins, as having a hatch slam down on you would really fuck up your day, possibly forever.) In an emergency, one sailor could pull the locking pins, kick out the supports and let the hatch slam down, but that was very heavily frowned upon.

Watertight doors were either quick-acting or not. A quick-acting watertight door (QAWTD) had a lever or a wheel that was connected to the dogging levers, which pulled the door tight. The doors that were not, just known as "watertight doors" had individual dogging levers set around the frame of the door.

The QATD is on the right, the WTD is on the left.

The dogging levers could be operated from either side of the door and were tightened with a “dogging wrench,” which was a short section of pipe that fit over the end of the lever. The dogging levers on all types of watertight doors had to be kept adjusted so that when the door was dogged down, there was even pressure on the gaskets. The rubber gaskets around the edges of the hatches and doors had to be kept lightly lubricated with petroleum jelly to keep them in good condition and they were replaced at the first sign of deterioration.

The DCPOs who did the best jobs were basically invisible, for like everything in Engineering, if it worked right and was reliable, nobody really paid it much notice. But if it didn’t work, there was hell to pay. Damage control gear that didn’t work could cost lives and possibly result in the loss of the ship. Smart officers paid attention to damage control and frequently spot-checked the work of the DCPOs, which had the additional benefit of letting the DCPOs know that their work was important and was appreciated.

Fire, Fire, Fire in Compartment.....

Of all the bad things that can happen at sea, probably nothing is more dreaded than a fire. Fire is what everyone trains for. Fire is why every sailor on every ship is required to complete a damage control qualification after reporting to each new ship.

Fire is why there is very little wood on a Navy ship. Other than a few decorative plaques, the only wood to be found on a modern Navy ship are the 4x4s used for shoring up damage and some plugs and wedges used for stopping leaks. This is a lesson that was learned with blood in the early days of World War II. You will not find a wooden ladder ("staircase" to you landlubbers) or wooden furniture. If you were to go into the Wardroom of a naval ship (the place where the officers eat and where the supply officers hang out), the furniture may look like they are made of wood and the bulkheads ("walls") may look as though they are wood, but it is all contact paper over metal.

The Navy is justifiably proud of its expertise in damage control. The rumor around the Fleet was that one of the reasons the HMS Sheffield was lost to an Argentinian Exocet missile was because the ship had wooden fixtures and ladders in parts of the ship and those items caught fire. The USS Stark was hit by two Iraqi Exocets. The one missile that hit the Sheffield did not detonate, while one of the Exocets that hit the Stark did explode. The USS Stark, after putting out the fires and stabilizing the damage, sailed away and eventually returned to the US under its own power.

There are a lot of factors that come into play, not the least being the prevailing weather and where the missiles struck, so the difference in the damage control readiness of the two ships may not be dispositive. The rumor was, however, that the British rapidly stripped their warships of wooden fixtures and furnishings.

If you look at a photo of a warship, you will see watertight hatches and doors. This photograph is from some civilian rustbucket:

Note the rubber gasket around the edge.

Now look at this photo (which is small):


The round door is called a "scuttle" and it is in the center of a larger hatch. You can see that there is a raised ring onto which the scuttle seats. That is called a "knife edge;" as you turn the locking wheel to tighten the scuttle down, the rubber gasket is mashed into the knife edge and that is what makes the closure watertight. If you now look back at the rustbucket's watertight door, you will see that the gasket is shot. It will be no more watertight than the average sieve.

Navy ships have a lot of watertight hatches and doors. It is the job of the Damage Control Petty Officer(s) (DCPO) in each division to maintain the WTHs and WTDs in the division's spaces. It is a pain to replace the gaskets, but the gaskets must be kept lubricated (with basically petroleum jelly) and replaced when they deteriorate. This is not rocket science, this is Damage Control 101.

At one point, I was invited to take a tour of a NATO warship. The ship was fairly new, was chock-a-block with weapon systems in a way that USN warships, which were designed to be able to remain at sea for much longer periods of time, were not. But as I walked around on the tour, I noticed that on every open watertight door and hatch, the gaskets were rotten. They were all shrunken, dried out and cracked. That warship had no watertight integrity and, in the event of a fire, it could not be made smoketight. The warship looked nice, it was clean and well-painted.

But it could not take a punch.

Damage control is the last line of defense against a loss of the ship. The USS Stark arguably seriously screwed up in its combat readiness, which is why she took two missile hits. But because her damage control was up to snuff, she survived and her crew came home.

The paramount importance of damage control readiness is a lesson the Navy learned the hard way. I doubt very much it has ever been forgotten.

Power Generation

There were several types of generators. Generators were classified by both type of service and by the type of prime mover which motivated the generators.

Ship's service generators were designed to provide electrical power to the ship during normal operations. The sizes that I saw ran from 500 Kilowatts to 1,500 Kw, with a voltage output of 440 volts. The motive power was either a steam turbine (a turbogenerator), a diesel or a gas turbine. Therefore you had SSTGs, SSDGs, and SSGTGs.

Emergency generators were fitted to some ships. These generators provided less power than a ship's service generator. They were either diesels or gas-turbines, as Solar gas turbines were fitted into the bows of some cruisers. Steam, for reasons that either are or will soon be obvious, was not used to power emergency generators. Therefore you had EDGs and EGTGs.

Some ships did not have emergency generators. The Knox class frigates had diesel generators that were of the same rated output as the SSTGs, they had one SSDG per ship.

Motor generators were driven by electrical motors. I wrote about LAPS here, the MG set which provided transmitter power to the SQS-26 sonar system. There were other MG sets, including one or more which provided 400Hz AC power for use in parts of the sonar and fire control systems. 400Hz power provided for much finer control than did standard 60Hz power; there were probably other reasons, which were explained to me in some boring electrical class and which I forgot as soon as I took the test.

Let's now consider the steaming of a Knox class FF and its electrical plant, which was about as simple a plant as there was. A Knox class ship had two boilers in one fireroom; one boiler was steamed for normal operations. Just forward of the Fireroom was Aux 1, which contained three SSTGs, each of which was rated for 750Kw. During normal steaming, two of the SSTGs would provide power to the switchboard in Electrical Central; the third SSTG would either be in standby or would be offline for routine maintenance.

Aux 2, which was well aft of the main plant, contained a SSDG and a separate switchboard. This was a very large unit, consisting of two V-16 GM diesels that drove the generator, and it was loud enough that double-hearing protection was required during operation. During normal steaming, the SSDG was offline and aligned for automatic start in the event that power was lost. Some ships would start the SSDG and bring it on-line for activities such as entering or leaving port or underway refueling; this ensured that if the plant failed for any reason, electrical power would not be lost at a time when having rudder control was vital. The SSDG was also aligned so that in port, if power was lost, the SSDG would start up (unless it was down for maintenance). If power was lost underway and the SSDG didn't start, you were shit out of luck.

If power was lost, whether underway or in port, the enginemen and the electricians would man up the SSDG and the After Switchboard. (In port, the electrician would immediately trip the breaker for the shore power lines, to prevent "feeding back" to the pier. ) Loss of electrical power underway meant that the boiler(s) had fires pulled, as there were numerous pumps in the main plant which were driven by electrical motors, including the condensate pumps, the main feed booster pumps and the fuel oil service pumps. Electrical devices throughout the ship were either on LVR or LVP switches. LVRs tripped off when there was low voltage and automatically came back on when there was enough voltage. Lighting and security systems were on LVR relays. LVPs were on items that were either not vital or that the power drain was such that it was not desirable for all that stuff to come on at the same time.

Underway or in port, loss of electrical power triggered an automatic security alert, where teams of sailors with guns would arm up and fan out about the ship to secure vital areas.

Underway, the boiler techs would work as fast as possible to get the boiler back on line. This was usually little more than use a periscope to look inside the firebox for spilled fuel and if none, start the light-off blower, get fuel recirculating through the lines and light fires. Once fires were lit, the boiler stops were opened, the SSTGs would start rolling over and as soon as the boiler was up to pressure, the SSTGs would be brought back on line and the main engine would start turning.

As the old saying went, for the screws to turn, the fires must burn, so Engineering was matter of "turning and burning."

Navy Showers

You might have heard of a "navy shower." What you do is turn on the water, wet yourself down and then shut off the water. You soap yourself up, turn on the water, rinse yourself down, and you're done.

Navy ships do not have water to waste (and I will write about how fresh water is produced some other time). The standard for the use of potable water was 25 gallons a day for each person on the ship. So if you have a ship with 250 officers and sailors, that works out to 6,250 gallons of fresh water per day. That is not just for showering, that is for all uses: Cooking, washing pots and pans, laundry, showering, swabbing the decks, drinking, everything (except flushing toilets-- that was done with seawater).

Fresh water use is a critical item, for if a ship runs low on fresh water, then "water hours" are imposed. During water hours, the showers are secured except at designated times and, often, for designated people. The cooks get to shower, the sailors who got really filthy at work get to shower, but the "radar girls" up in CIC, the radiomen, and the sonar techs, among others, have to suck it up and do without.

So some genius at the Naval Sea Systems Command came up with the idea of a special low-flow hand-held shower head. The user would have to bring the nozzle up close to his or her body and then hold down a button on the shower head to spritz down their body. Needless to say, they were not popular. Some folks on the ships thought they were hazardous, as a sailor would have to rub down the rinsing area to make it work better, so that was one hand holding the nozzle, one hand rinsing off. That left no hands to grab onto the grab iron in each shower in the event of a severe roll of the ship.

Add to that the fact that some ships were pretty disciplined on water use and, unless there was an engineering casualty, had refilled their freshwater tanks by the beginning of the work day.

So we go now to one of those ships. The supply system had delivered enough of the new shower heads to refit every shower on the ship, with some left over for spares. The Chief Engineer ("Cheng"), who was intimately familiar with the ship's use of potable water, regarded those shower heads with the skepticism due any bright idea from the shore pukes. Cheng ordered the division officer whose sailors would install the nozzles to put them aside and to work on more important things, important being defined as "everything else."

The Supply Officer, who knew that the new shower nozzles had arrived, asked Cheng when they would be installed. Cheng politely advised the SuppO to "fuckin' mind yer own fuckin' business."

The XO soon found out that the new shower heads were on board. He asked Cheng if they had been installed. Cheng said no, that the sailors who would do the work were "busy." The XO caustically observed that if Engineering waited until they weren't busy to install the new shower heads, they'd never be installed. The XO ordered Cheng to "start installing those goddamned shower heads."

And so Cheng did. The shower heads were installed first in all of the showers in Officer Country, including the showers in the private heads of the Captain and the XO, and they were also installed in the head in the Goat Locker (the slang term for the "Chief Petty Officers' Quarters"). Cheng then sat back and waited.

The Captain advised the XO that the new shower heads "sucked." The XO, of course, knew that from personal observation. The junior officers grumbled audibly. But the biggest reaction came from the Goat Locker. The chiefs in B and M divisions knew what the fresh water usage of the ship was, they knew that the new shower heads were not needed. They made that point vocally to the other chiefs. The Command Master Chief relayed the complaints to the Captain and the XO.

And the chiefs had a plan. The R division chief ordered his sailors to reinstall the old shower heads and to "forget you ever saw the new shower heads." The sailors, who didn't want to have to use them themselves, were happy to comply. The chief storekeeper made sure that the supply records of the ship did not show that the new shower heads or any of the spare parts had ever been received.

And so, the next time that the ship went to sea, the R division chief threw the new shower heads over the side.

Problem solved.