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Who Likes Ships? We Have Aircraft and Trains.

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Japanese light cruiser Isuzu hit by an aerial Mark XIII torpedo dropped from a TBF-1 Avenger flown by Lt(jg) E.F. Ternasky flying from USS Lexington (Essex-class), Kwajalein, Marshall Islands, 4 Dec 1943
 
You beat me to it. I was about to post photos of it going by my place on the St. Clair River. It is on it's way to Kingston Ontario to join a museum there. Fortunately it is not on the way to the ship breakers!
 
I thought it was an awuflly awkward trip top Thunder Bay like I heard.

It's not the only musuem ship to be moved.. USS Texas won't be going back to where it was moored once it gets out of drydock..

But sure beats the fate of the USS Croaker.. it's now the front fender of a Hyunadi Tucson.. :(
 
Got to drive this in 1992 and 1995... Maryland.

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You beat me to it. I was about to post photos of it going by my place on the St. Clair River. It is on it's way to Kingston Ontario to join a museum there. Fortunately it is not on the way to the ship breakers!
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@mmissile, did they let you blow sans 1 & 2 overboard & watch tank level during that evolution?
 
Ship #534, so called as it was the 534th ship laid down at John Brown's yard at Clydebank. Later, officially named "Queen Mary".
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So how do you get over 80,000 tons moving? Remember, this is a luxury liner, not a slow freighter, and when pressed into troop carrier service and pushed to the limit it managed 32.5 knots, or a little over 37 mph. Most German u-boat torpedoes weren't even this fast. The liner, during the war, was nicknamed 'The Gray Ghost', and was usually un-escorted as it was faster than any escort would have been.

The power required for this was supplied by steam in the form of oil fired boilers. Imagine a large boiler, double ended. A large structure, nearly 31 feet tall. To burn the oil, it isn't merely squirted in like a home furnace, instead a forced draft is supplied by means of five foot diameter fans, four at each end of the boiler. The fuel is the most economical type, namely heavy bunker oil. This stuff is almost like tar, so thick that it barely flows. To use it as fuel, it is pumped through screens to catch debris, then steam heated to thin it out and filtered again before being forcefully injected through the burner nozzles.

There are 24 of these large boilers, arranged in four boiler rooms. There is an additional boiler room but not for driving the engines; these are the auxiliary boilers to run the ship itself, generating electric power, running pumps, providing heat and hot water and powering the water purification room. The electrical generators alone will power a town of 100,000 people. But the main boilers generate steam for the propellers that are driven by steam turbines, fed by 700 degree (f) steam at 400 psi.
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Turbines like this were geared to drive the four props. Finely balanced, they were very delicate. Even when docked and the propellers weren't needed, these turbines had an auxiliary motor that kept them slowly rotating, about 30 times per hour, to prevent distortion from parts getting too hot or cool. Including the bearings, these turbines are 70 feet long and generate, in total, 160,000 horsepower.

At 1,018 feet in length, this ship was carefully engineered at every step, with thousands of models being used to test hull shape and equipment locations.
Even the bridge was built with aerodynamics in mind; at speed, the airflow over the superstructure would keep rain off the bridge deck.

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That huge size looks nicely proportioned, it's hard to tell from here that those huge exhaust funnels were wide enough to fit three locomotives side by side.

16,683 people were once packed aboard during troop movements, no ship has ever beat this record. To make room, everything was utilized, even the swimming pools were emptied and filled with sleeping bunk beds. During the war, she was painted grey.
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Of course the ship was mainly built of steel, but with 50 different kinds of wood used throughout, it was known as 'The Ship Of Wood'. Thin layers of wood veneer were applied to the steel structure for a warm look.
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Quick fun fact: over 3600 tons of steel rivets were used to build this ship!
 
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@mmissile, did they let you blow sans 1 & 2 overboard & watch tank level during that evolution?
Everybody got to keep it straight and level. I did get to bring it to periscope depth... My friend[missile-tech]who got me on-board for the Tiger-Cruises, was friends with the EXO. The boat was brand new in `92. You wouldn't have known it was the same boat in `95. Saltwater really made it gray instead of black, and the floors had lots of wear patterns [lots of wear and tear on stuff]. They did all the angles and dangles, crash dive, emergency blow, etc. Running on the surface at sea, was beautiful. The first trip was well over 24 hours. The second was shorter, and I took my dad. It was fascinating, and something few people have ever done.

One thing that was amazing, was the volume, pressure, and endless amounts of hot water for showers. All homes should have these systems, albeit a bit expensive.
I have hundreds of pictures. Most are too large to post...
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Back when I retired from the Army I went through some retirement classes at Bangor Sub Base. It happens that the Chief of the Boat for one of the Ohio Class subs was attending as well.

We got to talking and he invited me for a tour of the boat. To say the least I was impressed. I was surprised on how big that thing is On the inside.
 
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