Maintaining Your Battleship Gun Turrets: It's Electric!

In this episode we're inside a 16in gun turret trying to fix an electrical problem.
For our previous episode on changing lightbulbs:
• How many Battleship Cu...
For our episode on the Pit Sword:
• Pit Sword
For our visit to the ship's catacombs:
• Catacombs
For the video opening an armored hatch:
• Down the Hatch!
For all of our videos on the ship's guns:
• Guns
To support this channel and Battleship New Jersey, go to: www.battleship...
To volunteer, email:[e-mail]

[@HuskyKMA]

I can't believe I just spent 16 minutes watching a video on how to troubleshoot lights on an 80 year old ship I'll probably never step foot on. And I loved it.

[@charleschris4123]

I know same here hopefully one day I get to go just to meet him

[@straybullitt]

What I took away from this video is, if you want to diagnose a electrical problem on a battleship, you better have Libby, and her keen eye, along to help.

[@sheeb1]

It's such a strange thing isn't it? Even though it sounds like such a mundane subject it still keeps up engaged. It makes me want to fly out from Australia just to see the ship and every 2 seconds stopping and saying "I know what that does".

[@matthayward7889]

Same 😂

[@Mrmartins345]

Absolutely agree @HuskyKMA and like wise doubt I'll ever set foot on the new jersey living over the pond, maybe one day. But loving the channel watched virtually from the start keep up the great work Ryan and all 👍

[@JackBWatkins]

Being an electrician on a Big Capital Ship must have been a real daunting task. Imagine fixing emergency power in an emergency.

[@harryballsagna4549]

The USS South Dakota had that happen. A pretty interesting read if you check it out

[@tyler_bt3326]

Imagine fixing ANYTHING on a ship this size. Or even trying to isolate the problem in the first place

[@JackBWatkins]

@@harryballsagna4549 can you send me a link or a title?

[@whirledpeaz5758]

Imagine being an electrician on a nuclear Aircraft Carrier, were if both reactors Scram, you only have the Diesels to maintain power to primary coolant pumps and get at least one reactor back up. Dead in the water drills were kinda fun once you understood the SOP.

[@Tomcatntbird]

I was in the US Navy for 8 years and was an IC3 (SW) from 97-05. When we purposely tripped the ships power to function test ship wide ABTs, I found it interesting to hear several doing the same thing simultaneously. ABTs are for vital systems only. I was also a repair party electrician in damage control. When applying for an electrical job, I tried explaining to the supervisor about shipboard electrical not having any grounds, yet there are "grounding straps" from large electrical equipment enclosures to the deck and the ships prop shafts also have 2 "grounding straps and metallic brushes that discharge the static electricity that is built up through the hull of the ship when moving through water. At night, I could look over the aft of the ship and see what looks like arc flashes of green bolts from the props. I love being at sea.

[@comradeivan3903]

Shaft earthing! Didn't know it created arcs from the prop - I bet that was pretty cool.

[@michaelmckinley2221]

Thank You for Your Service.

[@jth877]

When I was 15 years old I watched a 1991 news broadcast taking place on board Missouri during the Gulf War. They were following around sailors showing daily life. They followed an electrician into the small space under the turret. He was there to repair wiring that, if recall correctly, triggered a magazine flood. He grumbled to the camera about 40 year old wiring.

[@troysemrau3654]

Was an electrician for 5 years on cruisers. Try hand over handling in your wire runs in between compartments. FUN!!!

[@Najolve]

Wan an aviation electrician's mate for 5 years. Try watching your platform take off and getting back to the playstation. FUN!!!

[@skunked42]

Retired ET, yep. No fun. Hands in a cable run? Check. 25 years of nasty? Check. Fishhooks on armored cables? Check. Random garbage? Check. Cable tags? Whats that? Random dead ended live cable? Oh ####!

[@sadiejustin]

I hope the yard hand who installed that in the 80's is still with us and can see this video. We still built with craftsmanship then, and that transfer switch reflects that!

[@kevincrosby1760]

Now the yard hands would probably be confused when they opened the cover and didn't find a replaceable circuit board populated with chips. Years ago I re-wired a car after an electrical fire. Ever pop the hood on a Ford and see a neatly LACED wiring harness? :)

[@NaClSandwich]

I think my favorite redundant feature is the crew! Sure you can rig up all sorts of systems to fix stuff in the event of an emergency but there's no real substitute for having a skilled person there to do the needful when shit hits the fan.

[@kevincrosby1760]

...and therein lies the problem with restoring an old ship. I'm just as comfortable measuring bias voltage on a vacuum tube as I am a transistor. Younger guys, not so much.

[@nicoveverka87v]

If you run out of ideas, which I don't think will anytime soon, maybe put a camera in a area that's being restored and do a time lapse of the restoration. Or maybe once a month take a volunteer of your choice throughout the ship and have them question whatever they want to know about something and answer that question. Or just do a vlog of the problems you might have in a week or month

[@loosh5101]

Hopefully Libby got something nice for finding the fuse box (or least the nearly hidden little sign saying "look here") and saving the day. A cup of her favorite coffee or an "I found the fuse box before the electrician" sign for her office or something. For a future video: Ryan finds the wiring diagrams and does twenty minutes on them (I think there was a video about the general plans)?

I second this motion 🙂👍

[@richardhall9815]

YES!!

[@billkallas1762]

Five or so years ago, I had a blinking light problem in my house. It did it once on the first day, three times on the second day, and on the third day, half the circuits in the house went dead. Of course, I checked the circuit breakers, but resetting them didn't work. I finally noticed that all of the dead circuits came from just one of the two hot 110v inputs. Turns out that my hot leads to the house went through the branches of a tree, and the insulation of one of the wires were worn off. My power company came out and cut a bunch of branches of the tree and ran a new wire to the house and didn't charge me for it.

[@BlackEpyon]

Yeah, that definitely sounded like one of the hot leads was flakey.

[@billkallas1762]

@@BlackEpyon I had a lot of big branches that I had to saw into five foot long lengths so that the monthly branch pick up people would grind them up.

[@BlackEpyon]

@@billkallas1762 I have to admit, as a landscaper, relying on others to carry away tree branches isn't something I'm used to :P

[@kevincrosby1760]

Of course they didn't charge you for it. Everything on the supply side of the meter is their responsibility. Having you actually lose power due to an untrimmed tree probably resulted in a few meetings at the Power Company, as they should have been trimmed BEFORE they caused an outage or presented a hazard. FWIW, around here the saw crew in the chipper truck would have been right behind the repair crew and the branches would have been disappearing about as quickly as they hit the ground.

[@kilianortmann9979]

Do you document something like this, so when Ryan Szymanski III comes along in 50 years and stumbles upon a similar issue he knows what might work?

[@andrewfidel2220]

Man, I'm sure it would be great to have an as-built for the electrical system, but that would eat up a huge number of hours that could probably be better spent doing more critical preservation work.

[@jon750t]

Speaking of ship electricity you guys should do a video of CV-2 being hooked to Tacoma Washington power grid and over revving her turbo generators to match frequency with the town and supply power for 30 days or so. Happened in '29 I think. Should make for a good video.

[@The_Modeling_Underdog]

Libby rocks!

[@randacnam7321]

The fuse probably blew from thermal fatigue. Fuse elements will heat up and expand somewhat in use, and after many thousands of cycles depending on the magnitude of the current fluctuations in service the fuse element will break. This is a known issue with fuses that deal with varying loads over long periods of time.

[@klsc8510]

Interesting! I was a computer repairman in the Air Force decades ago. Rarely would a fuse blow. For some as the system was over 10 years old then, that might have been the cause if we replaced the fuse and everything worked.

[@cleverca22]

electric cars have the same issue on the main battery, ive heard of fuses blowing just because you did one too many high-torque slams on the pedal but the newer tesla cars are using a pyro and an e-fuse, an MCU monitors the current flowing, and decides if it should blow the explosive fuse or not that lets you define allowed current patterns, and change the fuse rating based on if your starting or running normally and it wont have any thermal aging

[@darrenhersey9794]

I used to work on 30 year old radios in the Air Force. I didn't know why they failed, I just knew that some of the fuses or circuit breakers would go bad because they were old. We learned to check across the fuse or circuit breaker if you hald low voltage, but power still passed through.

[@JerzeyBoy]

Same thing happened to the XBOX 360s at launch.

[@stevecooper2873]

Wouldn't the constant vibration tend to 'age' the thin metal elements of the fuses as well ?

[@FlyingWithSpurts]

A 16 minute video on troubleshooting lighting issues sounds like the worst idea for a video, yet Ryan still makes it engaging. His love for the ship and passion for all its inner workings shine through!

[@coolconfuzer]

Can you do one on storage. Refrigerators/freezers. Different types of provisions. Machine shops. How many mechanis onboard and electricians. And I would like to know how they change the oil on a battleship. I was told it doesnt get changed but is heavily filtered.

[@Lucas12v]

I'm sure there's a thousand different gearboxes with oil in them with various change intervals and procedures.

[@45lc48]

i second the oil change part, i believe they've already shown the refrigerators/kitchens and provision areas

[@JoshuaTootell]

I can tell you on smaller ships (last one I was on was 378' long), the oil was sampled and sent to a lab. The engines didn't get an oil change as long as the oil was doing its job. We did have an Lube Oil Purifier (LOP) that was rotated out through the two Main Diesel Engines (MDE's) and Ship Service Diesel Generators (SSDG). Between the purifier, and the amount of oil that was burned and leaked, the oil was VERY VERY rarely changed.

[@stradplayer90]

I have been curious about the chilled water coolers for the magazines and how they worked.

[@wallyschmidt4063]

Depends on the amount of oil in equipment. A ship's gearbox uses lots of oil; it has to be cooled and filtered before use in gearbox and returns to the main sump (takes the heat out of the gearbox)and the cycle repeats itself. There is a limit of about 10%, of adding new oil over a certain time frame (due to chemicals in lube oil, to keep them in the lube oil). A ships gearbox can contain hundreds to thousands of gallons of oil. So a complete oil change is very expensive, time consuming; its alot easier to just keep the sump filled to a certain level and take oil samples. If adding oil to equipment, there must be an record kept of oil being added (to determine if something is wrong/leaks somewhere). Oil samples tell if you are getting water into the lube oil system, or if there is certain wear and tear on moving parts due to particles suspended in the oil. A purifier/coalescer can also be used, by taking oil at the bottom of the sump (where water will collect) processing the oil (removing water- usually only a very small amount) and returning the oil to the sump. Not sure how the gearboxes on the battleship are preserved or if they have to run the lube oil system weekly. The main gear box should be vented. Not sure what a battle ship does for that (into space or vented up the smokestack (safer)). On the battleship is the steam turbine bearings part of the gearbox lube oil system?

[@cp1cupcake]

Something interesting. I had a professor who worked at a local power company. They were gradually phasing out old power transformers. These power transformers were the size of a small house. The replacements had a shelf life of ~10-20 years or so, were something like half the size, and are significantly more efficient. The old ones were put in around WW1 and when opened were shown to be in mint condition.

[@SixofQueens]

I have no electrical engineering background, but I love these videos about how y'all have solved problems you've encountered.

[@razgriz5552]

Cool! My family name is Basilone , the ship your volunteer served on is named after my Great Great Uncle John Basilone!

[@eherrmann01]

Ryan, you have the coolest job ever.

[@johncantrell614]

Yes, your lucky to have a former EM to help you on board. In general you can take a marine electrician and turn them into other types easier than trying to go the other way, because of the differences in the ship systems.

[@seatedliberty]

If Ryan ever goes down, is there a backup emergency curator system like Otto from the movie Airplane!

[@stevecooper2873]

8:10 -- Behind your shoulders, very nice WW2 vintage battle lantern. [get the batteries out!]

[@imark7777777]

now this is the kind of video I like. So basically you found an automatic transfer switch that automatically transfer to emergency power but emergency power wasn't running. On top of that there's been so many renovations much like a house unqualified work and miss labeled unlabeled etc.

[@PrisonersDilemma69]

Im a ramp agent and its super interesting to hear that a massive Iowa class battleship is able to be run by the same amount of power as an Embraer 175, a pretty small regional jet. 440 Hz

[@randyogburn2498]

I win a share of the prize. When he said every other light was blinking I just knew there was a leg dropped somewhere.

[@glennac]

My favorite redundant feature of the battleship are the curators. 😉

[@danielshine5217]

HuskyKMA I agree, but for some reason I can't stop watching the Battleship New Jersey Videos. I am also watching Cutting Edge Engineering, I will also never fix a bulldozer, but it is fun to watch. Great Job Ryan and crew for making the great videos. Hope to visit later this year.

[@ernieschatz3783]

So long as you know the circuit you are tracing to the power source is not live, you can use a toner and probe to more easily trace it out. The tools are battery powered and portable. The toner injects a signal into feed side of the circuit breaker, then you just move the probe on the outside of the wires until you get to the next panel or J box. The probe will give both an audible and visual signal if you're close enough to the correct wires. You might hear a weaker tone from other wires near the pair you are tracing, but the strongest signal comes from the wires you've injected the signal into.

[@henrycarlson7514]

Makes me glad that I was a Bt not an Et Thank You . Glad that you are so wise and have such a wise team to work with. Thank You for the interesting videos

[@onelife50]

Thank you Ryan, you are a cool dude.

[@garywayne6083]

The redundancy of actually firing the 16" guns fom various positions is pretty impressive, as are the 4 steering locations all the way back to the directly linked wheels aft

[@mattbibeault843]

I was surprised to learn that the 16 inch guns could be percussion fired with a sledge hammer. Also the ship could be steered using block and tackle pulleys and many sailors pulling the ropes

[@terryboyer1342]

Libby to the rescue!

[@phillyphakename1255]

I worked for a few months as a commercial construction electrician apprentice, and I immediately thought emergency lighting when you said every other light. Boy, those were annoying to install because we had to run twice as much conduit, one for EM, one for regular.

[@johnchilds6471]

WE had MBT's too, manual bus transfer for equipment like electric fuel oil service pumps, main feed booster pumps and such where you didn't want the power supply shifting without someone standing by to restart the pumps. Many pumps were set so that they would not automatically restart after a loss of power since you would not for example want to pump fuel into a boiler if fires went out. So a watchstander would have to stand by to restart the electric FOSP and then we would shift the MBT.

[@seafodder6129]

Not to mention that you don't want multiple large electrical loads all drawing starting current at the same time...

[@johnchilds6471]

@@seafodder6129Yea, the SSTG's start making funny sounds and the ET's start whining about replacing parts!!

[@johnbeauvais3159]

I’m curious how the ABT works, if I had to guess I would think each circuit energizes an electromagnet that holds the switch on that side so if you lose the main and the backup diesel fires up, it’ll produce a magnetic field which will attract the switch and flip it to engage the emergency system

[@Tomcatntbird]

I was an IC3 (SW) onboard the USS Peterson DD969 and the Carter Hall LSD50. U r correct. On the Carter Hall, we had a main bus transfer malfunction and explode since it didn't shut fast enough due to the amount of voltage. These ABTs all doing the same thing at the same time through out the ship is fascinating to me. I also had to go check Load centers and main switchboards for my equipment to function on emergency power since there usually wasn't anything automatic. ABTs are primarily used for vital equipment like steering, chilled water, and fire main.

[@robertgarrett5009]

You get a phase failure relay and that energizes whichever circuit is live, very common in fireman's lifts/elevators. Also any critical system such as hospitals and water pumping systems. You should see the 11,000v ones I have to deal with.

[@Tomcatntbird]

@@robertgarrett5009 I always used a fluke 87 digital meter. I didn't ever touch an 11k volt circuit. I did the maintenance/ calibration of the TLI analog gauges, the dc central alarms for intrusion, flooding, fire, and ventilation alarms. The preventative maintenance of all the synchro amplifiers for the heading, speed, and wind bird indicators. Also took care of the 2jv speaker amplifiers and speakers. Also did tons of sound powered phone repairs. Aside from the monitoring of the Wsn 5 gyros. Occasionally the 1mc, general, chemical, collision alarms and associated speakers.

[@hannahranga]

Judging by the quantity of stuff inside I'm wondering if it's a smidge cleverer and similar to modern ones. A modern decent automatic transfer switch will only flick over when the emergency supply is stable giving the genset a little to stabilise and then when mains power comes back on it stays on the genset for a programmable time (ours are set to 5min) because it's not unexpected for it to be on/off a few times before staying on.

[@dbadaddy7386]

Remember, "intermittent" is Latin for "works for mechanic".

[@MK0272]

Have you tried a radio frequency cable tracer? It sends a high frequency radio frequency signal through a cable, essentially using the cable as an antenna, and you use a special probe to pick up that radio signal. You can get them for less than fifty bucks on Amazon. It might make your job of tracing cables a LOT easier.

[@31dknight]

Great video from the battleship.

[@ZGryphon]

I once worked in a data center that installed a similar backup generator/automatic switchover system while I was there. It replaced an earlier system that relied on the network operator on duty wheeling a Honda camp generator down the hall and out into the parking lot (in foul weather, usually, because when else does the power go out?), propping the door open, running a bunch of cables, starting up the generator, and switching over manually before the giant rack of car batteries that was keeping the backbone router online died. Time limit: about 10 minutes. Time it took me to do all that, alone on a Sunday evening shift, in a thunderstorm: nine minutes, thirty-eight seconds. I'm not going to take credit for the purchase of the automatic system, but they _did_ order it about a week after that storm...

[@corollaguy6740]

Have you guys done a video on from a completely inert state, how the battleship would be brought online, and the time it would take? IE: How quickly could the battleship in its 80's configuration go from offline, to sea ready. Assuming it was stocked, manned and provisioned. What systems come online first, etc.

[@coolconfuzer]

@@carsonbrown7603 He covered this already.

[@Lucas12v]

@@carsonbrown7603 I don't think he means from its condition as a museum ship. I think he meant active service but everything shut down at the pier. Either way, both topics have been covered to some extent.

[@seafodder6129]

@T.J. Kong It's a matter of hours, not days. I never actually timed it, but taking a steam plant from cold iron to ready to answer bells by the book (EOSS) shouldn't take more than 6-8 hours at most. In an emergency, the book goes in the bilges and a competent engineering crew can get up and running in 1 to 1.5 hours. 'Course that will entail putting a lot of thermal stresses on the plant itself because you're not waiting around for things to heat up evenly, but if the need is sufficient (like someone's shooting at you) then that's a problem for another day...

[@JoshuaTootell]

I know it was covered somewhere in one of these videos about how they could use the emergency generators to power the pumps to light off the plant to eventually build steam, assuming you are lighting off dead cold. But normally they would have a steam shoretie.

[@kevincrosby1760]

@@seafodder6129 better hope you don't need to shoot back. On an older ship, you are looking at 8-12 hours for a usable signal from the gyrocompass, and closer to 24 for something accurate. Sucks when you need those heading/pitch/roll inputs to stabilize your weapons platforms. We tried to give ourselves 36 hours before scheduled departure. That gave you time to restart the gyros once or twice after losing a vacuum tube or 2 during startup.

[@1991apfel]

That pointing makes me as a learned electrician cry and shout....

[@exovian489]

Great job, as always, making a video out of something like this. Videos going into the "backend" of the ship like this (electrics, plumbing, HVAC to the extent it exists, etc) are some of my favorite!

[@mikehenthorn1778]

That is so interesting as it looks so much like my boiler systems and generation systems. And tracking back your problem on your control wires for something that was originally built in 1957 and has multiple updates and maybe blueprints.

[@davelewandoski4292]

Great video Ryan, thanks!

[@jimmacaulay844]

The complexity of the ship amazes me! How many millions of manhours went in to just designing all the systems to interoperate with each other, let alone build them? Today it would take at least 10 years. They did it in only 1 or 2 years! If it had taken more, we'd have lost the war.

[@Arp1757]

Here’s a candidate for a cool but little-known redundancy feature: How about the dual filament navigation lights and the NAV light panel with the test switch so you can check both filaments? You’ll find it by the Boatswain’s Mate of the Watch desk in the pilot House. On most ships I have been on, it was a required daily check before sunset.

[@garyung3095]

@ 9:25 on the underside of the hatch (always lock the hatch so they don't close on you) looks like there are two hand holds on the left hand side. @ 9:46 the lower one comes into view.

[@cuppadiem]

these are facinating

[@JohnFarrell-jo2sw]

The automatic transfer switch also keeps the generator from back feeding the rest of the electrical system that way nobody is getting electrocuted that’s fixing the reason for the power outage

[@andrewreynolds4949]

The best redundancy system on a battleship I think must be the damage control crews. Although I do like how many of the last generation of battleships were able to use any of their rangefinders to send data to any of the guns

[@andrewfidel2220]

Automatic transfer switches are both wonderful and the bane of the existence of facilities people who have to maintain high reliability. They're great because they get you back up and running on your secondary power source nearly instantly, but because they're mechanical they wear out or fail to trip. I've been told that data centers in parts of Germany and France don't use uninterrupted power supplies or automatic transfer switches because they're not only more expensive than not having them, they actually lower the reliability of the system. Based on the number of failures I had in a decade of managing them I can see how that could be true, we had 2/2 transfer switches fail or need major maintenance during that period, luckily both happened during scheduled system tests.

[@klsc8510]

Andrew, read my story I posted an hour after you about what happened to me at Griffiss AFB, NY.

[@andrewfidel2220]

@@klsc8510 would love to but sorting comments by time I don't see it, was it a reply to someone else?

[@klsc8510]

@@andrewfidel2220 It is a short distance below yours. The comment was like yours. The best is to start the video again. Scroll down to find yours. Keep going a bit and you will find mine. Where is a search box when you need it!!!!

[@vincentlavallee2779]

Great short video and I loved the problem solving 'tour'! It brought up the South Dakota loosing power at Guadalcanal in Nov 1942 when the Washington saved the day. Did they ever figure that problem out conclusively so that it never came back?

[@strykertrahan9182]

It’s electric! Boogy woogy woogy

[@Duffman-zn7ku]

Also have a pretty wicked led strobing effect on the camera also

[@tomtrask_YT]

Interesting...I've seen the name Basilone in the Raritan Public LIbrary and had to look it up to see that, yes, in fact, it's the same Basilone for which the USS Basilone is named. I love New Jersey's sense of history.

[@MrBook123456]

good one

[@robertgarrett5009]

Love the mistakes that are taken as gospel, as this is a great way to get a shock.

[@JB-hu5jm]

For a second I thought that you were announcing a new electrical system to bypass the hydraulic one in order to move the turret and guns!

[@gowdsake7103]

You train for it to the point where you can do an emergency run in the dark by feel

[@garbo8962]

Ryan real sparkies never sweaters while working. We have to wear long sleeve flame resistant ( PPL ) shirts. Even the thread for the name & company logo must be flame resistant. In the real world would only have maybe every 6 to 8 th ceiling light connected to emergency power but like you stated the navy had their own rules. They stopped using starters in most fluorescent luminares ( no such thing any more in NEC as a light fixture ) back in the 1960's. Have a 4 lamp luminare in my garage that I recycled for my garage about 50 years ago. Painted it then removed the 4 starters and installed new T12 ballast. Next time when a lamp or now a T8 ballast burn out going to use LED'S that bypass the ballast. Unbelievably how many luminates there are on the New Jersey. Thanks for all the great vids. Hope you get big crowds starting this spring now that the 2 year pandemic appears to be easing up. Hope history channel shows some of your great vids.

[@Trebuchet48]

I have an ABT like that in my garage, and for the exact same purpose. When the line power goes out, our propane generator starts automatically and the transfer switch connects it to the house circuits. When the line power comes back it switches back over.

[@cheryldawdy5962]

Spider web cable for the gun turrets at Are. Intresting seems every war ship has lots of wiring

[@adamantturner5019]

This was a good video. I would like to see more of these type of videos.

[@coyotehater]

Would it be possible to do a video on the electrical problem that happened to the SoDak at Guadalcanal? I’ve read the official reports & have a vague understanding of it, but it would be great to see it actually demonstrated. Thanks!

[@burroaks7]

Go Libby!!!!!!

[@lonnyyoung4285]

I think it would be interesting to learn about in-service overhauls. Also, how exactly do you change significant parts of an engine on a battleship, such as Nevada getting new turbines and boilers?

[@daniel_poore]

That was an interesting journey thanks for telling us about it!

[@nickpopelka]

I did enjoy this journey thanks for sharing

[@willmetz1490]

I feel like this video is an interesting video on what seems simple, kind of reminds me of technology connections

[@reese2694]

Ryan: "If youuuve ever watched our 20 minute video on how to change a light bulb..." Me: "Everyone shut up, Ryan is talking to me!"

[@Prifly70]

My wife's been asking me to install a chandelier light. Nope, watching this instead. It's related...ish.

[@johnm7249]

Is there a wiring diagram that you update with your discoveries?

[@wfoj21]

I loved this the first time I watched it- and recognized it as a ABT immediately. in a range of stuff I wanted to see a video. FYI - Newer ships designs - Emergency diesel IS NOT kept in the auto start condition in port (lack design to ensure it DOES not try to power the pier and City). From What we have been presented- I have impression in the 1980s - the upgrade changed NJ to being that way. When built -the NJ probably could safely have the Emergency diesel generator in auto start condition. Freaked me out in in port Mobile Alabama on the USS Lexington in port when the whole CITY lost power from a lightening strike - and the Emergency generator spews it puff of smoke as starting near immediately. Now - how about a video on MBTs.

[@mykofreder1682]

Fuse tubes may also be vacuum or non-volatile gas in them, a 50 or 70 year old fuse may lose this vacuum and burn out because it wore out.

[@patrickmorris9710]

I am a commercial electrician. I worked on 480 and 208 three phase systems

[@tapalmer99]

If they wanted to have automatic ABT back in world war II I'm sure they had them. Inside of that box, though it looks complicated, it really just comes down to some micro switches and electromagnets to sense and signal and move everything around All the little wires are for sensors and remote monitors and also to possibly send a signal to the generators to start & stop, as well as light up engineers boards. But again if they wanted automatic ABTs back in WW2 I'm sure they had them (I'm only speculating it actually would be nice to know for sure)..

[@joshuaholmes468]

Actually warships are ungrounded to minimize the effects of battle damage to the electrical system that way if a phase is grounded due to damage the whole system doesn’t fail but only the phase that is ground out meaning equipment can keep running just at a lower effectiveness

[@fsj197811]

Very cool, thanks for sharing!

[@dbadaddy7386]

My dad hired a Navy electrician for residential work. Shortly after he started he managed to shock himself. Turns out 400 Hz 440V is quite different than 60 Hz 120V. Heh.

[@bluerebel01]

Very interesting thank you for the info.

[@Phil-D83]

Whole ship is a ground point

[@GarnetSwan]

I wonder what it’s like on Massachusetts, Alabama or North Carolina where they didn’t get the refit with the new ABT

[@geraldsharp4838]

I like your videos.

[@quikdrw]

tracing a cable hand -over-hand on a Navy ship is a skill that has to be practiced

[@redbovine]

I was visiting the USS Yorktown a few years ago. On there they had huge power cables that could be run between compartments if there is damage that breaks the wires thru the area. Basically big jumper wires with plugs in a lot of areas to tap into. Does that exist on the Iowas or another system to bypass damaged areas?

[@mhesbach]

He has shown them before.

[@thekidfromcleveland3944]

They're called casualty power cables. They were considered Essential on ships as heavily compartmentalized as the Iowa class battleships and Essex Class Carriers. So yes New Jersey was equipped with them

[@h17matt]

They're all over the place on the USS Midway in San Diego, although they don't explain their use on the tour.

[@JoshuaTootell]

We had them even on smaller ships. Just a thing for a vessel that might see combat.

[@kevincrosby1760]

@@thekidfromcleveland3944 Still found on just about every ship. Last ditch provision to route power around a damaged area.

[@nagjrcjasonbower]

Wow... Sounds like an Indiana Jones method of finding power! Remembering your Charlemagne must be interesting when it comes to fish (volunteers like I was at a USAF Museum nearly 20 years ago...) 😎🖖

[@stevecooper2873]

You might want to seriously consider [consult your electrical expert] setting transfer switches to 'manual'. Especially insure that your out-of-service diesel gensets are in 'manual', or disabled so that they will not be attempting to start should you lose power. No need to complicate matters.

[@derekhieb7458]

You can probably down size fusing to more reflect the normal amp load of LED's. This would increase the safety factor on the old wiring circuits, especially lightning that has years in service. I've found some LEDs use more amps on start up, might take amp to determine load from cold start and add 10% as I remember as a rule of thumb for fusing. Seen those electric switch boxes since I was 14 in sea scouts and later on many tugs, some still 110 DC, not converted to AC as I believe might have been done at some point in your battleship. Thing is I've never seen that big red main disconnect before, but we could shut it off at the main panel. On one 1919 vintage tug open knife switches.

[@randacnam7321]

Fuses protect the wiring, not the fixtures.

[@josephmoylan9199]

Nice vid man i liked it

[@phillipbouchard4197]

I believe that the electrical and gunnery back up systems on our battleship and cruisers were the best in the world. I have read accounts of the loss of the British battleship Prince of Wales that the lack of 100% reserve electrical power to her bilge pumps as well as a lack of power to her after 5.25 " anti-aircraft batteries were contributing factors in her loss. The Royal Navy modified her sister ships to some degree to compensate for these design shortcomings.

[@Lucas12v]

I think you're correct but we did have problems at times. South Dakota got beat up pretty bad by Kirishima due to loss of electrical power. Luckily USS Washington annihilated Kirishima before she could finish the job.

[@phillipbouchard4197]

@@Lucas12v You were correct about South Dakota's electrical difficulties during the Second Naval battle of Guadalcanal , however they were in large part caused by an electrical engineer who tied down a main circuit breaker thereby putting the system into series which resulted in the system failing at a critical juncture of the battle. Thank goodness for Washington !

[@keithlewis9106]

Ryan , would do a short video of the schedule of tours and visits to the ship. As you in the north state, weather and others issues. So a short video of schedule and times for us to plan trips.

[@BattleshipNewJersey]

Things do vary, so we recommend going to our website, battleshipnewjersey.org to plan your visit. But generally, we're open year round.

[@BryceKant]

Every other light is flickering..... yep, ship is haunted. Can stop troubleshooting.

[@robertbullcarmichael9856]

Labeling is great especially when it's up to date. How often do you test your diesel generators?

[@alexandertoshich765]

Cool!

[@blackhawks81H]

Das Blinkenleitzen

[@Chodda]

can you talk about the anchors and how they operate

[@TheRealGraylocke]

So where does the exhaust for the emergency diesel generator (EDG) vent to? Does it get vented into the main exhaust, routed directly out of the hull, routed to main deck? Do the plans show that? And where does the EDG draw fuel from? I'm assuming it draws air from inside the ship; however, I could be wrong. lol

[@haljames624]

Go libby go libby

[@crazyguy32100]

Landlubber electrician here, industrial. Topic related to turret wiring that I was wondering about. I know the aiming of the turrets, both 16" and 5" is primarily done by the fire control computers down in the citadel, which can directly control the aiming and firing of the guns. I was wondering, it knows what angles to go for but how does it know where the guns are aiming? There has to be some sort of feedback from the turret drive and elevation, like a pulsecoder or a resolver or even a big potentiometer, but where is it and how does it transmit the position back to a fully analog computer?

[@kotori87gaming89]

I would also like to know this. Also very curious how they did it in older ships with hydraulic or steam-driven rotation systems.

[@thomasmoore8142]

Yes there is telemetry between all the guns and every fire control unit and even all the control switching stations that give control to combat engagement or the gunners in the turrets. I read an article in Wiki about it but they never showed the encoders, just the copper wire switching, so parts may still be restricted, maybe Ryan can show us the encoders.