The alarmingly-vertical ship
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- Опубліковано 10 вер 2024
- Rowan Ellis, Alec Steele and Simon Clark face a question about a scary ship situation.
LATERAL is a weekly podcast about interesting questions and even more interesting answers, hosted by Tom Scott. For business enquiries, contestant appearances or question submissions, visit www.lateralcas...
GUESTS:
Rowan Ellis: @HeyRowanEllis, / heyrowanellis
Alec Steele: @AlecSteele, / alecsteelesteel
Simon Clark: @SimonClark, / simonoxfphys
HOST: Tom Scott.
QUESTION PRODUCER: David Bodycombe.
RECORDED AT: The Podcast Studios, Dublin.
EDITED BY: Julie Hassett.
GRAPHICS: Chris Hanel at Support Class. Assistant: Dillon Pentz.
MUSIC: Karl-Ola Kjellholm ('Private Detective'/'Agrumes', courtesy of epidemicsound.com).
FORMAT: Pad 26 Limited/Labyrinth Games Ltd.
EXECUTIVE PRODUCERS: David Bodycombe and Tom Scott.
© Pad 26 Limited (www.pad26.com) / Labyrinth Games Ltd. 2024.
I like that Tom says "I can't think of anything suitable other than a Pringles tube" and then immediately rotates the pen he's holding to demonstrate
Exactly! But he didn't even hold the pen up properly as if it was the tube, just sort of vaguely pointed with the end of it! lol
It didn't capsize, it Pringles-can-sized...
as someone who lives in the midwest i immediately thought corn cob which ironically is more correct of a shape than the pringles tube
While holding a pen in his hand, Tom Scott can't think of any cylindrical object other than a Pringles tube.
Can’t believe my part time role as “special guest on various podcasts” lead to me to the answer with this one 😂
I can't tell you how happy I am to see my question on the show one year after sending it in. Love to see it, completely made my week!
Congratulations
A great question, one of my favorites, because almost until the end I had no clue, what the answer is, and, most importantly for me, no ideas about a field of knowledge I lack of
Sometimes it can take a while to find the right approach and slot for it. Hope it was worth the wait!
@@lateralcast It sure was!
I understand that production on these happens ages before they air, but I didn't expect a year! Perhaps my questions still have a chance...
What threw me off is that the current USS Los Angles is the lead ship from the Los Angles class of submarines. Thank you Tom Clancey for that price of knowledge.
100% came here to say the same thing. Hunt for Red October.
andrew66862 A lead submarine, not a Led Zeppelin.
@@daerdevvyl4314 if it was made with lead chromate, it could've been a yellow submarine as well
Also, many vessel classes are named after the first vessel in the series.
Wikipedia:
Length 658 ft 4 in (200.7 m)
Holy moly, imagine that thing upright.
There are pictures of it standing up, so no need to imagine
Check out the pictures. This was a very striking sight.
When I saw the title I just assumed it was the RV Flip (which is the ship Tom mentioned that was designed for this) which I recently saw/heard something about -- but I could have sworn I heard about it on an episode of Lateral
I think it got into the subconscious mind of the Internet due to its decommission then. I also came across a JPG of it on meme sites just a month ago.
I also thought it was about the Flip
*RP FLIP
7:12 Very good point, but still off on the scale: USS Los Angeles was 200m long, so they were likely more than 100m off the ground! Understandable if you're more used to aircraft, but the necessary scale of airships is much bigger, because they need so much volume to lift any decent weight (square-cube law and all that). Having seen a full-scale airship mockup in person, pictures tend to not convey how big they have to be to carry a reasonable load
"docked" in this case presumably just meaning tethered to the ground?
@@gdclemotethered to a tower, which was typical for docking an airship.
@@myladycasagrande863 Fun fact: The Empire State Building in New York was originally intended as a docking tower for air ships. This would never have worked, though, because the architects simply didn't consider the mass of the airships themselves.
@@gdclemo Its nose was locked into a tower about which it can freely rotate like a weathervane, so theoretically it's never side-on to the wind. en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mooring_mast
I do so love the captions on these: "(Deflates)".
According to the Wikipedia page it rose to an angle of 85 degrees before descending again. If that is correct it did not flip 180 degrees.
I went straight there to check too, and the 180 degree thing they mentioned in this video confused me
If it ended up belly up, which they seem to describe, then it's final position would have been roughly 180° from it's original orientation
I kind of got it when Simon said that it was docked at Lakehurst, New Jersey. Lakehurst, New Jersey was the base where the Hindenburg exploded.
The pictures of this event happening are amazing. Definitely look it up.
As I started watching this I paused the video and looked up USS Los Angeles on Wikipedia, so after that I knew the answer. It was fascinating to see the process by which the contestants then arrived at the right solution; more so that watching and ring to guess the the right solution. Naturally Alec had the key question - which axis did the ship rotate.
"As I started watching this I paused the video and looked up USS Los Angeles on Wikipedia,"
Are you Adam Ragusea? 😂
I can see how a Pringles tube would work well as an object that someone might have to hand to physically demonstrate with, but...
Wait, what about the pen Tom's holding?!
Never thought I'd see the day when we'd get a Lateral on shipping dynamics where everyone's trying to figure out who's on top and who's on bottom
When the "ZR-3" part was said, my thought was - "Wait, it's a family-trucking Zeppelin, innit?!" and lo-and-behold I was right! XD
Yeah, I was thinking the same, the US name, I was damn, that's some misshap for a ship to do that while docked, then he said the German name and was like Ah
As soon as he said "Lakehurst" I knew what type of ship it HAD to be.💡
(Oh, the humanity.)
Spoiler mode… ON…
Of the ridged air ships purchased by or built for the US Navy (four of which held official navy ship commissions, hence the “USS”) the Los Angeles was the only one not to end its career crashing. It was decommissioned and scrapped in 1939.
Where’s that Zeppelin expert Tom once met with “come and fetch this god damn cat” story? He could probably add more.
Parenthetically, I've been in the presence of a boat that did this. If you're ever in Astoria, Oregon you should check out the Maritime Museum there. The sea conditions at the mouth of the Columbia River are such that the Coast Guard uses - and needs - response boats that can handle stuff like that. Merely capsizing is practically routine.
That picture is amazing, it looks exactly like a rotated shark (which is another fun thing to look up if you don't know it already).
I am hungry for Pringles now.
I didn't recognize the ship's name -- but I assume it's an ex-Zeppelin airship. I'm not 100% sure why there were no injuries; but maybe it was slow enough the crew could walk down floor slope and into the corner with the walls so they didn't really fall.
So this would have been at Lakehurst NJ naval air station station.
Copied from a reddit post about the incident:
"As the Los Angeles was being prepared for a flight at Lakehurst, a cool breeze blew in from the Atlantic and lifted the ship by the tail until it was completely vertical. It remained in this posture for about 7 minutes. Crewmen inside the ship clung to girders and hung on until the ship swung slowly over and sank down on the other side of the mooring mast coming right side up once again in a gentle roll. The only damage to the ship was a welter of small holes in the nose of the ship from pots, pans, tools and spare parts that rained down from storage nets during the summersault. With the mooring mast at approximately 200 feet tall and the Los Angeles at about 700 feet long, this event lifted the tail to nearly 1000 feet. At that height, it would have been visible from pretty much anywhere in South Jersey." - Ships In The Sky
Now I thought that this was going to be about that research ship that flips vertical, the 'Floating Instrument Platform' or FLIP, but as soon as he said the Los Angeles I knew it was the LZ 126
First time I've not heard of the exact event before and yet guessed it pretty quickly. New Jersey and being aware of the USS Macon and Akron where what made me think of it, then the time frame checked out. Very happy
Ok I thought it was going to be one of those carnival/theme park rides with the boat that swings back and forth then goes upside down
OOPS! I GUESSED WRONG!
It was a submarine! Submarines in the USN are commonly named after cities with a naval connection. I remember the kerfuffle from the Navy naming a nuclear submarine Corpus Christi after the port in Texas, and Catholic bishops objected to naming a military weapon literally “Body of Christ.”
This comment was typed with the video paused, before hearing the answer.
I was thinking of the USS Los Angeles submarine
My theory was gonna be that it was a boat that went halfway around the world. So, from its starting position, at 1/4 of the way around it would be comparatively "vertical" and then at the halfway point it would be comparatively "inverted". All while remaining completely safe.
Edit: wait, I forgot it was docked the whole time. Oops. Still, would have been a great twist
Yea i was so confused listening to this in the podcast because there's no video. Now I'm content knowing my gesture is exactly the same.
The minute he mentioned New Jersey naval base and 1927 I knew it was a blimp.
Spoiler hider
20 seconds in and already confident I know what this is, I guess I'll see if anyone in this one also had an airship obsession as a kid
I believe the idea that being drunk reduces injuries from falling was debunked. I heard about that in uni, in a statistics class. If I recall correctly, the study was done on skiers, and the real cause of less injuries among drunk skiers was that they spent less time actually skiing and more time at the après-ski drinking.
"Other hypotheticals are probably available"
😂
2:30 shows that this was recorded a while ago - it’s the white papery bit now
I had a suspicion about the "ship" bit but couldn't recall why.
But can I say that it seems more than coincidence that Rowan's subtitles were in blue?
As soon as they said the ship's old German name. "That's not the designation Germany gave boats. That's the kind they gave zeplins."
I know this only because I read fantasy alternate history web fiction of the era. Namely, "The Flying Cloud."
Calling in my answer at 0:51. Airship? Let's find out...
I think I watched a Fluctus video that mentions the vessel Tom mention at 4:05 yesternight...
More Alec Steele please
The 180 flip part of the question makes no sense. The rear end of the ship did rise straight into the air, but it didnt then flip 180, as that implies the rear end would be on the bottom by the end of the event, which didnt happen?
The tail of the ship kept rotating over the top - i.e. it did a 90 degree flip over to the other side, completing a total 180 degree rotation about its tethered nose.
@@lateralcast That's what I got from the question, but that's not how the sources I can find describe the event.
@@lateralcast Is the Wikipedia page wrong then? Not that I trust every Wikipedia article without question, but that description seems more likely.
4:17
Hurricane Sandy would very much disagree with that statement.
My first thought was "deliberate scuttling of a ship, so they were prepared" (to make an artificial reef, perhaps), until they said it wasn't intentional. And I suspect artificial reefs weren't really a thing in the 1920s.
As soon as I knew the name of the ship, I knew what the incident was. Yes, it was an airship.
Google "USS Los Angeles having a really bad day"
There was a research vessel that did that stand on end trick, on purpose, by design. I remember it actually being called the USNS Flip, but I think that was a nickname, and it was not self-propelled, and a lot newer.
Not sure about a WWI-era USS Los Angeles, though.
Ah. Sneaky wording.
I was already familiar with this event, so it was easy for me.
Somehow I was mistakenly associating this story with the USS Akron instead though…
Tom, have you ever tried getting xkcd's Randall Munroe on Lateral?
Witnesses actually said that the last words before they did it were "Hold my beer!"
... I haven't even heard the question, but I think I would have to bow out of this one.
Unless comments about Pringles tubes are badly leading me astray.
Also, is that a Lexington class battle cruiser in the thumbnail?
Edit: nah, i was thinking of the RP Flip. I was indeed astray.
I was stuck in the reference frame of the thumbnail. D'oh!
My first thought went to the RP Flip
I thought it was going to be one of those swinging ship amusement park rides
The second I heard where it was, I remembered a certain other devastating event with a similar ship that happened there and I remembered the story. (Obfuscating my comment to not give it away.)
It's an airship? Ah, Z R3. A Zeppelin. :D
Thinks -
Re-purpose old mineshafts as vertical airship hangars! Easy parking, just rear up & slither on down.
Horizontal flying is for the birds, people, - Boba-Fett Zeppelins are the future - 'Sidey-ways R'us!' : )
Has Alec got the idea of building an air ship in his mind? He had that look in his eyes. 🤔
lol pringles tube.
Was it a Ballet class war ship?
I think I'd have to sit this one out
I'm familiar with a ship that does that on purpose for research purposes but I can't remember why it needs to do that
Nope!
It's a different thing I was thinking of
The guests on this show never look like how I expect them to.
Today I learned that being drunk double the chance of surviving high fall
First thought: it’s a submarine or a zeppelin
"Lakehurst" Every American should have shouted "airship". Maybe a lot of other nationalities, as well. The name made international news in 1937.
I've got news for you about the American Educational System and its shortcomings...
@@empath69 "should have"
It's time to get your videos sponsored... Let me think... what brand could you choose this week ?
I just found out the 3D rotation of a lens like a zeppelin or ruby ball is called a lemon and I don't know how to feel about that.
If you are drunk, you are also more likely to fall from a height. Which is why we know that you are more likely to survive a fall from a height when drunk.
A huge oversight not to put the actual picture talked about in the video version here.
I had it as soon as Lakehurst was mentioned... because that's where Germany dropped a hydrogen bomb on the US in 1937.
*Not sponsored by Pringles.
so what's the answer then? it's a thrilling story and everything but i don't see how the crew's survival necessarily follows from the conditions set
It happened slow enough that they just hung on, and corrected for the wind and ballast to re-orient. As mentioned above, despite the Los Angeles' success the other four ships all met disastrous ends when similar situations happened.
When the USS Los Angeles was moored at Lakehurst's high mast, it was 50m off the ground, it was 200m long, so as it pivoted up into the sky, anyone losing their grip on those girders was pretty much guaranteed to die.
im just gonna guess the k class
4:55 *First* World War.
"Given its after the Second World War." - Tom Scott about 1927.
How to make Indy Neidell of the Great War disappointed in you.
USS Los Angeles is a Zeppelin
Was. It was scrapped in 1939 (which is a pitty, it was highly successful).
@@MyRegardsToTheDodo Well it was the exception to the rule; its four sister airships were all destroyed in crashes - some which resulted from events like what happened here; the crew were very good (and probably more than a bit lucky) to prevent the Los Angeles from crumpling into the ground.
@@empath69 Well, the three sister ships were all built in the US, this one was built in Germany. Not sure if there's any relevance, though, just sayin...
The cringle over all of them mispronouncing Los Angeles
It isn't a boat.
No, it's a ship.