Comments by "Steve Valley" (@stevevalley7835) on "The Drydock - Episode 070" video.

  1. wrt the question about the USN experimenting with T-E drive before using it in battleships, USS Jupiter had TE drive. Laid down in 1911, she was four years ahead of the T-E powered New Mexico.
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  2.  chris younts  As far as I know, everything built with a T-E drive carried it through their service life. When Saratoga was torpedoed the second time, the flooding shorted the control system for the T-E drive, leaving her dead in the water. I don't think it would even be possible to convert from T-E to geared turbine because of the way the T-E allowed greater compartmentalization. The conversion would require a lot of bulkhead removal and realignment of turbines and shafts. The USN had not given up on T-E drive after the 20s either. The Buckley class DEs, laid down 42-43, had T-E drive.
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  3.  chris younts  I don't have a copy of Jane's at my fingertips, so I resorted to using Wiki. According to the Wiki entries, NM was refitted with geared turbines in the early 30s, as you said. Her two sisters were originally equipped with Curtis turbines, which were also replaced in the early 30s with geared turbines. So yes, they were all reengined, as you said, but they were not all initially built with T-E systems. As NM was the only one built with T-E, her engine spaces were probably not optimized for T-E, which facilitated the conversion to the geared turbines. Again, according to Wiki, both of the Tennessees and all three Colorados were built with T-E and none of the articles on those five ships mention replacement of the TE systems among the many modifications made over the years. Maryland was hit forward by a torpedo at Saipan. The Wiki article mentions her return to Pearl was done running astern so as to not put pressure on the bulkhead where the damage was. The Wiki article doesn't mention it, but I have read elsewhere that running that distance at any sort of sensible speed was only possible due to her T-E drive. Reversing turbines usually offer only a small fraction of the power available from the forward running turbines. In the case of T-E drive, reversing the drive is done by simply reversing polarity of current flow, so the full power of the turbines, generators and motors is available in both directions. Interesting conversation. I now have a much more granular understanding of early 20s battleship drive systems than I did this morning.
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  4. ​ chris younts  Again referring to Wiki, NM's original T-E drive generated 27,500hp. The conventional turbines in her sisters generated 32,000. The difference probably due to the power loss inherent in converting from mechanical power to electricity, then converting the electricity back to mechanical power, as Drach notes in the video. They could make 21 knots. After their modernization, which increased displacement by 1400 tons, the new boilers and turbines, which took advantage of performance improvements made since the originals had been installed 15 years earlier, generated 40,000hp, and the ships could reach 22kts in spite of the increase in displacement. The cage masts were gone, a new superstructure was built and they looked modern for 1932. The navy putzed around for years about modernizing the Tennessees and Colorados, but, outside of installing some 5/25s and a couple 1.1s didn't do much with them. Imagine if the second London treaty had not had the escalator clause, or the USN had not expected the escalator to be triggered, while designing the North Carolinas, they would be looking at new BBs with only 14" guns, vs the Colorados with 16" guns and might have seen what could be cone with the Colorados. Imagine Colorados being rebuilt in 1938 with superstructures like West Virginia had in 44, with the bulges that had been planned for years but not installed until after WVa was sunk, with AA armament appropriate for the 1938 threat environment (think 4 twin 5/38 mounts and about 10 1.1 mounts) then take a page from the Italian's book, gut out the engine spaces and install the latest high pressure, high temperature boilers and turbines, and use the room freed by removal of the generators and motors to install physically larger boilers and turbines. The Italians increased power in their old BBs from 30,000 to 75,000 and bumped speed from 21 to 26kts. The original T-E system in the Colorados only generated 28,900hp. Unfortunately, my computer received a new version of ,Net a couple months ago and SpringSharp no longer works. Maybe someone with a working SpringSharp can plug in the Colorado specs and see how much power it would take to push them to 27-28kts and see if that sounds feasible. If WVa and Maryland could turn 28kts, they might have been with the carriers, instead of at Pearl, on Dec 7. Even if WVa was at Pearl, flying into the teeth of 4 or 5 1.1" mounts would have made a much more interesting morning for the Kate pilots attacking the ship, and the bulges would have made the Kate pilot's efforts less productive.
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  5.  chris younts  the ships that were heavily damaged, California, W Va and Tennessee were really brought up to date wrt superstructure and AA. Colorado and Maryland were shortchanged. The Colorados are actually pretty close to the Italians in size. The Andrea Dorias, after they were lengthened in their late 30s rebuilds, were 613' with a 92' beam. The Conte di Cavour class were lengthened to 611' with a 93.8' beam. The Cavours could hit 27kts with 75,000hp. The Colorados were 624' with a 97.5' beam. Wiki gives partial post-rebuild specs on the W Va; 114' beam with the bulges. The South Dakotas were 680' with a 108' beam and could top 27 with 130,000hp. It puzzles the heck out of me why the USN did not extensively modernize the Tennessees and Colorados in the late 30s. Even the Brits made a lot of improvements in the Queen Elizabeths and Renown, but the newest of the BBs at Pearl sailed into WWII with casement guns, cage masts and 20 year old propulsion machinery.
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  6.  chris younts  Yes, there was an odd situation with funding. The government was building public works projects all over the country under the WPA. I grew up in Kalamazoo, MI, where the County building, Federal building, civic auditorium and a fountain in Bronson Park were all WPA projects. I have read that Yorktown and Enterprise were built with funds sidetracked from an industrial redevelopment program. Odd And our guys paid for the short-shortsightedness with their lives.
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