wizofwas added these comments in the current discussion du jour ...

[snip]
You're very well informed.

Thank you, I try. This stuff does interest me, although I do have
to admit many areas where my technical expertise is severly
lacking. I know I burned DVDs from some History Channel episodes
maybe a year or so ago. If I get ambitious enough, I'll try to find
them but I have made a mental note to re-record them again on my
DVR. It's a dumb coincidence that a rather long episode or two
aired just last week, I think, relating the story of Titanic's
construction, it's major structural and safety weaknesses, details
of the sinking itself, and results of the most recent dives on the
wreak, which I think began in 2002 and maybe ended a year or two
later (but I'm rather hazy about that, please help me out if you
can).

If it's the episode I'm thinking of where they found a 60 Foot(?)
section of the keel that was separated from the rest of the two
pieces of the ship. This section of the keel was from the middle of
the ship, and it broke
away from the stresses that was placed on it, thus allowing the
Titanic to break into the two pieces and sink much faster than it
normally would have. It's been a while since I've seen that
episode, but that's what I remember from it.

That's the one, wizofwas! THC has compiled 3 or 4 special episodes of
various aspects of the Titanic sinking, from the design and building of
the ship to eyewitness accounts to the court trials to early
investigates and on down to the more recent investigations after the
wreakage was finally located. I'm going to take a SWAG and say that it
wasn't positively located until the late 1990s and not successfully
dived by miniature submarine until the early 2000s. I don't know the
last dive date, but I have a vague recollection it was 2005. If you or
anyone can list the chrononology of the sinking and subsequent
investigations, I would sure be beholding!

I talked briefly about the proof that Titanic broke in half in an
earlier post but as I recall that THC episode, a marine structural
engineer used CAE and computer simulation based on eyewitness accounts
to calculate the rate of sinking and the probably angle of the hull as
it quickly went down by the bow also accounting for the effects of the
bilge pumps which obviously could not keep up. One episode I recall
asserted that engineering analysis predicted that the angle of descent,
which recall to be in the 11 degree range, would be sufficient to break
the hull between I think stacks 2 and 3, about in the middle or
slightly forward of the middle BEFORE the first successful dive found
the wreakage scattered over a several mile field. Also, I recall the
same engineer saying that the angle of descent could not have been
greater than about 6-8 deg. for the hull NOT to have broken in half.

It's tought getting old, isn't it, wiz? You and I both suffer from
"it's been awhile since I've seen that" syndrome which necessitates
being a bit timid and humble about asserting "facts" without going back
and re-watching an episode or doing some Googling first.

Good discussion, thanks for the input!

--
HP, aka Jerry

"If it waddles like a duck and quacks like a duck, it must be a duck"