Last Saturday the First Texas Volunteers met at the ship to do some heavy grunt work; the moving of six 14-inch shells down three decks to the projectile storage room in the #5 turret/barbette. In her heyday, she had seventy large, young men in this area to do the job. We had about a dozen & the task took about 2½ hours to complete.
These shells are the last 14-inch shells in the world, with the exception of private individual collectors. They are HC, or high capacity explosive shells (these are also known as HE or high explosive). They have no detonators and the 1O4 lbs. of explosive have been removed, leaving them at around 1,4OO lbs. each. Not unlike shoving around a crushed Volkswagen.
The only machinery used on this project was a Yale forklift. This was used to move the shells into place on the main deck & was operated by ship's workers. It was also used to hoist the shells into plcae for lowering, over the hatch in the main deck. Everything else was done the same way they did it when she was a commisioned ship, simply because there's really no other way to do it.
After the two eyetaps (large, threaded, metal eyelets) were inserted in the shell's base, a chain was attached to one eyetap; the other eyetap was used for a safety cable, in case the main link failed. It was then lowered about 25-28 feet down through open hatches on a chainfall boom.
Once it was down on the 1st platform, it was then transferred to the rail carriage. This is a special piece of equipment that is onboard the ship. Evrywhere on this deck, you will find a large, heavy-duty I-beam rail welded to the top deck. The rail carriage is a bit like a mini roller-coaster; it has four wheels, with two on each side of the I-beam. It's actually somewhat amazing these rail carriages still work, as they were used in the trasfer of literally thousands of rounds over thier existence.
The rail is also not a straight path, as it must bend & turn to fit though several hatches. The hatch rail sections are removeable, and are placed for shell movement only. During firing operations, the removable sections are taken out to allow the hatch to be closed & sealed. This curving rail is also not as smooth as it was in her glory days. All this led up to some heavy shoving by the volunteer crew.
The rail is also tricky as there are two switchbacks along the way. One of these allows shells to go to the #4 turret's handling room. And aince that switchback changes the orientation of the rail carriage, it must go through another switchback to re-orient the carriage. This all sounds like a complicated process, but it's not; it's more than a complicated process!
Finally the shell is in the handling room, below the #5 turret. Once it is rolled into the projectile storage room, it must be transferred to another rail carriage inside the projectile storage room, to allow it to be rolled down the individual rows. There are numerous waist-high racks in this room, and corresponding thick metal cylinders on the bottom deck, and a rail running overhead for each row. The shells are stored nose-down, and thus is why they are nose-down during the entire transfer. In hindsight, this may seem rather dangerous, but it wasn't; the shells had no detonators until just before they were sent up the projectile hoists to the main guns. This was considered the best large naval gun design +9O years ago.
The air in the projectilre room is stifling. It is quite warm , and still. The ship's air blower's don't work, and it would be difficult to move fans down to this location, as well as power them. So we tough it out & get sweaty. After just ten minutes of running around with a video & still digital camera, my shirt was soaked down the front. I was shooting FTV documentaion video, and I know there are several times where I can be heard panting. In spite of some haphazard conditions, no major accidents occurred. Only one small incident took place, when during a switchback the carriage stuck on the old rail and the shell swung back & hit Andrew Bostich in the knee. He yelled some well-muted obcenities, walked it off & got back to work.
Afterwards we sat around & had some pizza and talked about various ship's activities. This project was done to support the Hard Hat Tours, a special reserved tour where the public can come out & get a chance to see parts of the ship that are restricted from access. This shows what the shells looked like in storage below decks. The #5 turret is used because it is the easiest to access as well as run extention cords for lighting.
To see the digital photos I took during the day's project, you can go to http://www.fantasticforum.com/gallery/albums.php
14-Inch Shell Relocation
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There are also some more older shots of BB-35 that can be seen at the original page on this website.
http://www.fantasticforum.com/1_texas/index.html
http://www.fantasticforum.com/1_texas/index.html
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Hi Spike, I added the orginal 2 sets of photos you took to the GALLERY.
http://www.fantasticforum.com/gallery/BB35
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http://www.fantasticforum.com/gallery/BB35
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