On 9/27/13 5:57 PM, Vic Smith wrote:
On Fri, 27 Sep 2013 21:06:13 +0300, injipoint
wrote:



It's my understanding that nuclear subs are powered by steam
turbines which generate electricity for the electric motors that
run the propellers. The steam for the turbines comes from the
heat of the fission reactor. Lower a few more fuel rods and it
doesn't take but a few minutes for the core to heat up and the
cooling water temperature rises along with it.

Not sure but I think it might take longer. I know they take time
to lower the power, like a day or about that but I don't know enough
about the process to know the start up bit.

I was a USN boilerman on a DDG.
Some years ago, but here's how it worked than.
Nuke or oil-fired is the means to generate steam in boilers.
Whether nuke or oil, steam is steam. Boilers is where it all starts.
Steam powers turbines. For main propulsion, generators, and
auxiliaries like pumps and forced draft blowers feeding the boilers.
Steam also powers evaporators to produce fresh water.

Lighting off a cold boiler is the only lengthy process. Took about
2-3 hours on my ship, but since boilers were only "cold iron" in a
safe port like Norfolk, Va, they are normally hot and ready and
powering the ship even in port. Not much steam demand when not
propelling the ship, so they are basically idling.
When cold iron in a "safe" port, electric cables and fresh water lines
are hooked up to the ship.
You need electricity to go from cold iron to a hot boiler.
We could probably go from cold iron to "full hot" in less than an
hour, but it's better to bring up heat/pressure slowly to avoid heat
and expansion shock, so we always took a measured pace, firing only
one of the boiler 5 burners.

Nowadays steam is dead - except for nukes. As far as I know non-nukes
are now all gas turbine, diesel, turbo-diesel, etc.

Here's how it works with a steam-powered ships like injipoint
observed. I'll use my DDG as an example, but there won't be much
variance. Just replace rod movement for "burners."
In port a forward and aft boiler are hot and running on one burner
each. Each fireroom has 2 boilers, but normally only one is hot.
Running all boilers at full power gains very little extra speed.
Boilers have scheduled maintenance even underway, and often the idle
boiler is open and not operational for this reason.

The forward fireroom feeds steam to the forward engineroom main
turbines. That runs the starboard shaft.
Aft runs aft and port shaft.

Even on my ship built in 1961 most boiler controls were automatic.
Feed water, oil pressure, etc.
The main "humans" operating the boilers were the burner man and the
console operator. Operating pressure was 1275 psi.
Others on various fireroom watch stations monitored temps and
pressures, and were ready to take action for "casualties."
When steam demand began dropping pressure, the burnerman manually
pushed in another burner, and lit it by pulling down the oil control
valve.
Oil on a burner was either shut or wide open.
The console operator had little to do except adjust oil pressure when
demand was low, and adjust "excess" air, to avoid stack smoke.
But the console also provided an overview of many systems.

So you leave port on maybe 2 of the 5 burners, with low oil pressure.
Say you're doing 4 knots. The skipper wants to avoid a bottom
structure by backing one screw. Not sure about how the ship is
actually controlled, but I've seen this many times.
He sends a telegraph command to the engineroom powering that shaft.
Can't remember if that comes to the fireroom simultaneously, or the
engineroom repeats it.
Full astern. The engineroom cranks opens their main throttle, and
starts pulling steam. In the fireroom a full astern bell means the
burnerman pushes in and light all burners as fast as he can, because
all hell will break loose. As steam pressure drops, everything winds
up to maintain pressure, It's like banshees screaming. Forced draft
blowers, feed pumps, oil pumps, air flow, burners burning, steam
flowing.

There are limits. The engineroom throttleman isn't supposed to take
pressure below 1120 psi. That's the prescribed pressure for boiler
shutdown. At sea there's no electricity except that provided by
steam. You need the steam to run the pumps to restart the boilers.
I've seen it get close, and a couple times warned the throttlemen I
was going to shut it down. They listened.


My ship was designed for ASW, so we spent a lot of time chasing Soviet
subs. We were armed with nuke ASROC missiles.
Top speed was 27 knots. We were 4500 tons.
But she was geared for ASW, so she would squat and gain speed pretty
quickly when you opened the throttles. No roostertail, but a pretty
massive stern hump.
http://www.navsource.org/archives/05/01003.htm
That says top speed 33 knots. Maybe with 4 boilers and overload
burner tips. Never did that when I was aboard for 3 1/2 years.
1964-67. Flank speed was 27 knots. We would usually measure speed
by screw shaft "turns," not knots. I never heard more than 27 knots
mentioned, and can't remember the turns, maybe 40-50 max.

Going from 1/3 ahead to full to flank is the usual speed progression
of ships. If not done abruptly, there's no real excitement.
From dead to flank is a lot of action and noise.
From flank to full astern or vice versa is hectic, but only done in
open sea during "exercises."
It's been a long time, but my memory says port maneuvers were the
"scariest." From full astern to full ahead repeatedly.
Of course I couldn't see what was happening from the fireroom, but my
imagination always said we about to run something down or hit a dock.

Sorry if this is "too much information."








Wow...terrific post. Thanks.

Hi Vic,

I am curious as to the origin of "flank speed".
,,
I have never heard of it before and though Wikipedia defines it, there is no reference to the origin o the tem.

Cheers
Peter

On 28/09/2013 12:57 AM, Vic Smith wrote:
On Fri, 27 Sep 2013 21:06:13 +0300, injipoint
wrote:



It's my understanding that nuclear subs are powered by steam
turbines which generate electricity for the electric motors that
run the propellers. The steam for the turbines comes from the
heat of the fission reactor. Lower a few more fuel rods and it
doesn't take but a few minutes for the core to heat up and the
cooling water temperature rises along with it.

Not sure but I think it might take longer. I know they take time
to lower the power, like a day or about that but I don't know enough
about the process to know the start up bit.

I was a USN boilerman on a DDG.
Some years ago, but here's how it worked than.
Nuke or oil-fired is the means to generate steam in boilers.
Whether nuke or oil, steam is steam. Boilers is where it all starts.
Steam powers turbines. For main propulsion, generators, and
auxiliaries like pumps and forced draft blowers feeding the boilers.
Steam also powers evaporators to produce fresh water.

Lighting off a cold boiler is the only lengthy process. Took about
2-3 hours on my ship, but since boilers were only "cold iron" in a
safe port like Norfolk, Va, they are normally hot and ready and
powering the ship even in port. Not much steam demand when not
propelling the ship, so they are basically idling.
When cold iron in a "safe" port, electric cables and fresh water lines
are hooked up to the ship.
You need electricity to go from cold iron to a hot boiler.
We could probably go from cold iron to "full hot" in less than an
hour, but it's better to bring up heat/pressure slowly to avoid heat
and expansion shock, so we always took a measured pace, firing only
one of the boiler 5 burners.

Nowadays steam is dead - except for nukes. As far as I know non-nukes
are now all gas turbine, diesel, turbo-diesel, etc.

Here's how it works with a steam-powered ships like injipoint
observed. I'll use my DDG as an example, but there won't be much
variance. Just replace rod movement for "burners."
In port a forward and aft boiler are hot and running on one burner
each. Each fireroom has 2 boilers, but normally only one is hot.
Running all boilers at full power gains very little extra speed.
Boilers have scheduled maintenance even underway, and often the idle
boiler is open and not operational for this reason.

The forward fireroom feeds steam to the forward engineroom main
turbines. That runs the starboard shaft.
Aft runs aft and port shaft.

Even on my ship built in 1961 most boiler controls were automatic.
Feed water, oil pressure, etc.
The main "humans" operating the boilers were the burner man and the
console operator. Operating pressure was 1275 psi.
Others on various fireroom watch stations monitored temps and
pressures, and were ready to take action for "casualties."
When steam demand began dropping pressure, the burnerman manually
pushed in another burner, and lit it by pulling down the oil control
valve.
Oil on a burner was either shut or wide open.
The console operator had little to do except adjust oil pressure when
demand was low, and adjust "excess" air, to avoid stack smoke.
But the console also provided an overview of many systems.

So you leave port on maybe 2 of the 5 burners, with low oil pressure.
Say you're doing 4 knots. The skipper wants to avoid a bottom
structure by backing one screw. Not sure about how the ship is
actually controlled, but I've seen this many times.
He sends a telegraph command to the engineroom powering that shaft.
Can't remember if that comes to the fireroom simultaneously, or the
engineroom repeats it.
Full astern. The engineroom cranks opens their main throttle, and
starts pulling steam. In the fireroom a full astern bell means the
burnerman pushes in and light all burners as fast as he can, because
all hell will break loose. As steam pressure drops, everything winds
up to maintain pressure, It's like banshees screaming. Forced draft
blowers, feed pumps, oil pumps, air flow, burners burning, steam
flowing.

There are limits. The engineroom throttleman isn't supposed to take
pressure below 1120 psi. That's the prescribed pressure for boiler
shutdown. At sea there's no electricity except that provided by
steam. You need the steam to run the pumps to restart the boilers.
I've seen it get close, and a couple times warned the throttlemen I
was going to shut it down. They listened.


My ship was designed for ASW, so we spent a lot of time chasing Soviet
subs. We were armed with nuke ASROC missiles.
Top speed was 27 knots. We were 4500 tons.
But she was geared for ASW, so she would squat and gain speed pretty
quickly when you opened the throttles. No roostertail, but a pretty
massive stern hump.
http://www.navsource.org/archives/05/01003.htm
That says top speed 33 knots. Maybe with 4 boilers and overload
burner tips. Never did that when I was aboard for 3 1/2 years.
1964-67. Flank speed was 27 knots. We would usually measure speed
by screw shaft "turns," not knots. I never heard more than 27 knots
mentioned, and can't remember the turns, maybe 40-50 max.

Going from 1/3 ahead to full to flank is the usual speed progression
of ships. If not done abruptly, there's no real excitement.
From dead to flank is a lot of action and noise.
From flank to full astern or vice versa is hectic, but only done in
open sea during "exercises."
It's been a long time, but my memory says port maneuvers were the
"scariest." From full astern to full ahead repeatedly.
Of course I couldn't see what was happening from the fireroom, but my
imagination always said we about to run something down or hit a dock.

Sorry if this is "too much information."

No way is that "too much"! That's excellent.
I hope you have this stuff written down for your family etc.
I never tire of hearing tales of how things actually ran and what
happened in the workplace. You get more than enough of the political
history - we should hear more of the stories of the people who did the
jobs.
Thanks for taking the time.

On 28/09/2013 9:15 AM, wrote:
Hi Vic,

I am curious as to the origin of "flank speed".
,,
I have never heard of it before and though Wikipedia defines it, there is no reference to the origin o the tem.

Cheers
Peter


It's a USN term afaik. If you are protecting a convoy and
they turn to avoid a sub, you, the destroyer or frigate, needs to
make up considerable ground to get between them, the targets, and
the bad guys. You needed to maintain a flank position between
the two.

I think your sub guys used it in WW2 to move as fast as they could
to get to their target positions. Although, in those days, almost
anything could outrun a sub. But they sure were hard to find

On Fri, 27 Sep 2013 23:15:23 -0700 (PDT),
wrote:

Hi Vic,

I am curious as to the origin of "flank speed".
,,
I have never heard of it before and though Wikipedia defines it, there is no reference to the origin o the tem.

Cheers
Peter

From www.history.navy.mil

Flank Speed
One quarter more than standard speed except for cruisers, destroyers,
light mine layers and fast aircraft carriers. In cruisers, destroyers,
light mine layers and fast aircraft carriers it is ten knots more than
standard speed.

This is certainly a U.S. term but I don't know whether the royal navy
uses the term or not.... so you have an excuse :-)
--
Cheers,

Bruce in Bangkok

Thanks gentlemen; very much appreciated.

I had recently bought and watched the DVD "Convoy, War for the Atlantic", a serious lengthy documentary series produced in England. I'd reccommend it t anyobe both the archive film footage an the information.

Although not mentioned in this documentary, a little known fact is that Malaysia's Penang Island was home to a fleet of long range German submarines that preyed upon Allied shipping during WWII. They shared a Japanese submarine base. Apparently the submariners of both countries despsed each other, inly due to the Germans' arrogance and sense of racial superiority. A private outfit has cleared the overgrown jungle that has hidden most of the site and it is now open to visitore.
Ciao
Peter

On Sat, 28 Sep 2013 12:31:30 +0300, injipoint
wrote:

On 28/09/2013 9:15 AM, wrote:
Hi Vic,

I am curious as to the origin of "flank speed".
,,
I have never heard of it before and though Wikipedia defines it, there is no reference to the origin o the tem.

Cheers
Peter


It's a USN term afaik. If you are protecting a convoy and
they turn to avoid a sub, you, the destroyer or frigate, needs to
make up considerable ground to get between them, the targets, and
the bad guys. You needed to maintain a flank position between
the two.

I think your sub guys used it in WW2 to move as fast as they could
to get to their target positions. Although, in those days, almost
anything could outrun a sub. But they sure were hard to find


Sounds right. I can only say for my DDG it wasn't an "emergency"
speed as suggested by a Wiki I read.
More "tactical." And when sea conditions allowed, all my skippers
would use it sometimes for hours on end while in transit, say from the
Med back to the U.S.
Sure, fuel efficiency suffers, but if you have enough and some to
spare to make it to port, or an oiler to rendezvous with, it didn't
matter. Warship skippers - at least in the days of cheap oil - were
probably no different than the typical power boater in that regard.
"Let's get this baby moving!"

On 28/09/2013 3:41 PM, wrote:
Thanks gentlemen; very much appreciated.

I had recently bought and watched the DVD "Convoy, War for the Atlantic", a serious lengthy documentary series produced in England. I'd reccommend it t anyobe both the archive film footage an the information.

Although not mentioned in this documentary, a little known fact is that Malaysia's Penang Island was home to a fleet of long range German submarines that preyed upon Allied shipping during WWII. They shared a Japanese submarine base. Apparently the submariners of both countries despsed each other, inly due to the Germans' arrogance and sense of racial superiority. A private outfit has cleared the overgrown jungle that has hidden most of the site and it is now open to visitore.
Ciao
Peter

Like the Japanese and the Russians nowadays.

I have a Russian submarine Commander's cap (brass, too,
not a 2&1/2).

A relative was in a bar in the Kurils. He was USN.
Some Russians from a sub were in there. Some Jap fishermen
arrived. They began a small to-do with the Russkis.
The Russkis wanted to engage so they took off their greatcoats
and caps and handed them to the US guys (neutral observers?)

They then proceeded to beat the **** out of each other until
the Japanese coppers arrived and collared everyone.

Seeing as the Russians were not reachable for the foreseeable,
my relative (distant) ended up with the coat and cap.

I ended up with the cap.

i actually put it on one day on my base and walked along a
Los Angeles class with the usual Marine on guard. He didn't even
notice. People see whole images, detail gets lost until you
need to go back and examine it. He just saw a normal RAN Officer and
not the Russian high-peak cap with the Hammer and Sickle on it.
I took it off pretty quick after we did that - impersonating a senior
officer etc. Not sure what **** I could have got in.

On Sat, 28 Sep 2013 09:17:27 +0300, injipoint
wrote:


I hope you have this stuff written down for your family etc.
I never tire of hearing tales of how things actually ran and what
happened in the workplace. You get more than enough of the political
history - we should hear more of the stories of the people who did the
jobs.

No, I'm not a diarist. That's Skip.
Most people would find it all boring and inconsequential.
You kinda "have to be there."

I failed to mention something about operating a boiler during
maneuvers. The opposite of steam demand.
When the skipper is sending full astern and flank speed demands,
demanding all the steam the boilers can produce, and heating
all the refractory materials, tubes, headers and drums to the extreme,
he might suddenly telegraph stop.
If the burnerman isn't very fast in cutting out all but one burner,
you can pop a safety. On my ship, the first one popped at 1320 psi.
Never saw that happen on my ship, but some close calls.
The results of that are consequential, because it requires some safety
valve maintenance, and blows many clumps of soot from the stack,
scattering it topside, and royally ****ing off the deck apes, who have
to clean it up.
I've popped safety valves as part of testing them, and the sound is
deafening in the fireroom, but the fireroom is very noisy anyway.
Once you get to steaming with 4 burners it's all shouting.
One time I was coming back from liberty and a ship similar to mine
popped a safety at D&S piers in Norfolk as I walked by, maybe a few
hundred yards away. Don't know why.
It was the most horrendous sound I ever heard.

I'd wager that my mates have forgotten most all of it.
Many took no interest in steam, and just did as they were told.
I consider all that a bit differently, and remember all the jobs I've
done, however lowly, their purpose, their high and low points.
I've felt satisfaction at sweeping a floor well. And utter boredom in
tedious jobs.
Sometimes I've felt humbled by standing on the shoulders of "great
men" whose combined work could assemble something like that ship I
served on. And proud to be an important part of its operation.
And sometimes I've witnessed utter stupidity.
For example, I had a damage control assignment where my task was
practiced by finding the obvious chalk markings put on the ASROC deck
by the Weapons officer.
Those chalk markings represented something I was to pick up, put in
normal water bucket, and dump over the side. My only garb besides my
skivvies, shoes,socks, dungarees and white hat was a pair a rubber
gloves.
What was I to pick up and carry in a bucket to toss over the side?
Plutonium.
The scary thing is I probably would have done it.

I think many here have their own good tales. And of an age to tell
tales that just don't occur any more. Time moves on.
And the most interesting tales to me are the ones that no longer can
happen. Old steam machinery is an example.
I'll relate later when I was a Lilliputian in U.S. Steel, dealing with
an 800 pound slugging wrench, using a 2000 pound hammer.
I do believe I'm now the only man alive who can tell that tale.
And the only one to write it down.

On Sat, 28 Sep 2013 05:41:17 -0700 (PDT),
wrote:

Thanks gentlemen; very much appreciated.

I had recently bought and watched the DVD "Convoy, War for the Atlantic", a serious lengthy documentary series produced in England. I'd reccommend it t anyobe both the archive film footage an the information.

Although not mentioned in this documentary, a little known fact is that Malaysia's Penang Island was home to a fleet of long range German submarines that preyed upon Allied shipping during WWII. They shared a Japanese submarine base. Apparently the submariners of both countries despsed each other, inly due to the Germans' arrogance and sense of racial superiority. A private outfit has cleared the overgrown jungle that has hidden most of the site and it is now open to visitore.
Ciao
Peter

When I worked for Petromer Trend in Irian Jaya there was a landing
craft captain - German guy - that had originally come out here to join
a team that were salvaging a German sub sunk somewhere off the West
coast of Malaysia. The boat was supposed to have been carrying mercury
from Japan, or one of their holdings, back to Germany and was sunk - I
don't; know by what.

Apparently they did salvage several tons of mercury and the story he
told was that one of the partners stored his share in a local
warehouse while the other partner moved his to some unknown location.

Some how the newspapers got hold of the "Treasure Hunt" and published
an article about it which resulted, the German said, in hoards of
police, customs, and I don't know who else, descending on the group
and their warehouse and seizing the "treasure" and putting some of the
crew in jail while they sorted things out. The German, being a lowly
diver got told to LEAVE! and so went to Singapore and got a job as
Master of a small trading ship trading between Bangladesh and
Singapore.

Apparently one partner and most of the diving crew ended up with
nothing and the other partner sort of vanished, together with his
share of the mercury :-)
--
Cheers,

Bruce in Bangkok