Naval Pictures V: The Glorious Fifth

[worktroll]

The Wiki entry for USS Scorpion will give you the general ideas ...

[marauder648]

RE USS Scorpion there's this lil series here

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XzLT6untzWw&t=2s

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Hlovmea7TQc&t=7s

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JaG6Uhm7jZc

This chaps an ex USN sonarman and he's done some interesting stuff like this and the stories he tells whilst doing Cold Waters playthroughs are quite interesting.  He also did his own analysis of the ARN San Juan accident looking at the sonar records of the incident and broke that down.  Not official of course, but seemingly pretty darn accurate.

[DoctorMonkey]

backing up to the fire damaged Russian sub...


that is a fascinating photo and shows clearly why torpedo tubes aren't mounted more obviously in the nose


it is similar to the radar in the nose of most fighters beneath the see-through cones


I can't help but wonder if a flatter/smaller design (like an AESA) is under development, not that anyone would tell us I'm sure!

[Kidd]

Yep. Flank panel arrays.

[kato]

Under development? Pretty much every submarine built since about 1980 has planar flank array sonars...

(except for some earlier designs built up to the mid 90s; for the USN, the Los Angeles SSN were backfitted with AN/BQG-5 starting in 1995, for the Soviets the first iirc were on Victor III SSN from 1979)

[DoctorMonkey]

and towed arrays to look behind


I suppose I meant instead of having the bow full of a ball of pings

[HobbesHurlbut]

and towed arrays to look behind


I suppose I meant instead of having the bow full of a ball of pings

Well, during War Thunder's April Fool's Day event, it was handy to have a MASSIVE ball of pings in the nose as it was a nice damage soak for torpedoes hitting the nose.

[Wrangler]

Reproduction of the original (and first) combat submarine, the Turtle. This one was made in Connecticut in 2007, it was fully operational but not without some modern stuff added to it.   The Turtle was originally used during the American Revolutionary War, however it didn't have much success it's mission attaching torpedoes (mines) to it's opponent's ships and blowing them up.

Most interesting write up on it was can be read here.

What was written that ship sunk on the Sloop transporting it, but it was memory was faded away.  Unlike static recreations, this one was used one.  Lord knows how hard that must been with hand cranked submarine.  xp



Older fully operational Turtle made in 1976

[Cannonshop]

a relic of another age.

[I am Belch II]

a relic of another age.

That is a great picture.

[Euphonium]

It's been far too long since I've paid HMS Belfast a visit :-(

[truetanker]

Might be old news for you, but I found this recently:

http://www.foxnews.com/science/2017/09/19/german-world-war-submarine-discovered-intact-with-23-bodies-inside.html

TT

[glitterboy2098]

Yep. Flank panel arrays.

IIRC those are passive only, while the nose mount is always active and passive capable.. with the shape largely being due to the need to create a semi-directional pulse of sound for the active part.

[DoctorMonkey]

I quite often walk across London Bridge and take photos of Belfast but don't think any of mine are that good

[Wrangler]

USS Whipple (Torpedo Boat Destroyer # 15), pictured in early 1900s.
Nice read about early DDs since they were so small and narrow and yet were able screen bigger ships.
\
Torpedo launchers are on deck for this one.  She has alot room dedicated to engine spaces from looks of her.
I imagine that life onboard was bit rough, especially at sea.

Here her late in Dry Dock in Mare Island in December 1912.  I guess she going through some light repair work since her engines seem to be still lite off.  She seen here with sister ships Paul Jones, Preble, Steward, and the Truxton.  If you look hard enough you may see early submarine there.  Different picture shows one.


Here in March 1919 she retired with her sisterships.  Mothballs/reserves seems so different back then.
You can clearly see her aft torpedo launcher in this picture. Her draft so small, looks like oversize speed boat.

[Daryk]

They may have retired in 1919, but I don't think they're retired in that picture.  The caption just says "at base", and they're flying flags in port just like ships in commission.

[Wrangler]

I was going by what the Hazegray historical website said for the picture caption.  They may been retiring that month they were in port but not formally decommissioned.

[kato]

DD15 was decommissioned on July 7th 1919. She was anchored at Philadelphia for 6 months before that, since January 3rd.

Somewhat interestingly that "nest" was not decommissioned wholesale at once as one might expect, but sequentially. In the picture, from left:
DD8 USS Lawrence - June 20th
DD11 USS Perry - July 2nd
DD15 USS Whipple - July 7th
DD14 USS Truxtun - July 18th
DD16 USS Worden - July 13th

They were then struck from the naval register on September 15th (all together) and sold off (all) on January 3rd 1920. Perry and Lawrence were broken up, Whipple, Truxtun and Worden were sold to serve as civilian freighters.

[DoctorMonkey]

here's one of my photos of HMS Belfast from - fiddled with the settings a bit to make the colours prettier and shrink the size (you lose the lovely view of Tower Bridge)

[Wrangler]

DD15 was decommissioned on July 7th 1919. She was anchored at Philadelphia for 6 months before that, since January 3rd.

Somewhat interestingly that "nest" was not decommissioned wholesale at once as one might expect, but sequentially. In the picture, from left:
DD8 USS Lawrence - June 20th
DD11 USS Perry - July 2nd
DD15 USS Whipple - July 7th
DD14 USS Truxtun - July 18th
DD16 USS Worden - July 13th

They were then struck from the naval register on September 15th (all together) and sold off (all) on January 3rd 1920. Perry and Lawrence were broken up, Whipple, Truxtun and Worden were sold to serve as civilian freighters.

Freighters?  The ships must been gutted.  Those things look like engines dominating the entire interior hull, but wow.  The narrowness of the hulls would have been challenging fetch decent cargo relay.  Wiki page says the Truxtun was convered into a Motor Fruit Carrier, but not much else about her.  I'm curious if there any surviving pictures what she looked like.

[Nightlord01]

That smoke in dry dock would be her generators running to keep the lights on. No way you'd have mains flashed up while in dry dock, it's a recipe for disaster.

[JadeHellbringer]

Worth noting that mothballs was handled a bit differently as well pre-Washington Treaty, in which ships weren't necessarily taken out of service when they were put in reserve- small skeleton crews would remain and the ship would still be in commission. I'm not entirely sure exactly when that system changed or what the reasoning for changing it was, but it was at some point during the inter-war period anyway.

[kato]

I'm curious if there any surviving pictures what she looked like.

Truxtun, unknown date, after conversion:

Edit: Note the missing smoke stacks in comparison to service as a destroyer. They probably ripped out most of the engines to make room.



Worden, during WW2 (front, towing torpedoed British freighter MS La Paz):

Her draft so small, looks like oversize speed boat.

Missile boats built in the 70s went up to about the same size - about 400 tons displacement, about 3 meters draft - although they weren't as "stretched" (Whipple etc had a 11.2 to 1 length to beam ratio; a 1982 Gepard FAC has a 7.4 to 1 ratio).

[Daryk]

Truxtun, unknown date, after conversion:

Edit: Note the missing smoke stacks in comparison to service as a destroyer. They probably ripped out most of the engines to make room.
*snip*

If they converted her to a fruit hauler, I'd be surprised if they ripped out all that much engine.  Speed was the name of the game...

[kato]

Found multiple sources saying that the machinery - triple expansion steam engines - was replaced with two 200 hp diesel engines. No statement on how fast they were after that, but the same conversion of Clemson class destroyers in 1931 resulted in them still able to make 16 knots.

Edit, little history tidbit:

The conversion of the Clemson class destroyers also resulted in a little international affair, as the US had to get rid of them to accomodate the 1930 London Naval Treaty - and they did so by announcing them as scrapped despite selling them for conversion. Britain called them out on their violation, which resulted in the US government having to send an apologetic letter to all treaty signatories that sadly they were powerless to stop the new owners from using them.
For the three earlier converted ships - done so before the 1922 Washington Naval Treaty, which would have at the very least outlawed reflagging them to Nicaragua - this conversion was still "legal".

[Daryk]

That would do it, then...  That long narrow hull wouldn't have needed very much to keep her speed up (in relative terms for the time, of course).

[JadeHellbringer]

Diesels make a lot of sense here, since they're small and basically unarmored- a bad cylinder would be relatively easy to get to. This was an unholy bear of a problem for the German panzerschiff vessels- you had to pull several decks (including armor!) to get to a bad engine. Luckily for the Germans, that wasn't often a problem for these ships!

(Worth wondering what the Yamatos would have been like with their originally-planned diesels. Getting into those engines through that heavy deck armor would have been a nightmare- luckily for the Japanese navy (sort of?), they were so unreliable and difficult to repair that the idea was abandoned for more conventional engines before it was too late.)

Interesting to see those stern tubes on the early DDs, surprising that didn't continue as a trend- firing off a few fish when turning away into a smoke screen would be pretty handy. Depth charge racks though ended up being a pretty good idea, as it turned out (though when these boats were built, of course, submarines were still seen as a silly toy rather than a legit threat).

[DoctorMonkey]

Interesting to see those stern tubes on the early DDs, surprising that didn't continue as a trend- firing off a few fish when turning away into a smoke screen would be pretty handy. Depth charge racks though ended up being a pretty good idea, as it turned out (though when these boats were built, of course, submarines were still seen as a silly toy rather than a legit threat).

Remembering that until WW2  a submarine was really just a submersible torpedo boat, they kept stern tubes for a long time
Destroyers moved to being more about guns and trainable torpedo batteries while the torpedo boats (PT boats, MTBs etc) got smaller and only carried a couple of torpedoes

[JadeHellbringer]

Oh sure, and that made sense (honestly it's surprising modern boats don't keep one pointed backwards!). I'm thinking in terms of destroyer squadrons in situations like Jutland in WWI or the Solomons campaign in WWII, bearing down on an enemy to launch their fish, then turning away to make their escape and letting go one more for the road as they do to ensure the enemy is forced to turn away.

[Daryk]

With modern torpedoes it doesn't matter which direction you launch them.  They haven't been straight running for some time now...