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“And lastly, if you stand in front of frame 26, starboard, and tickle the left most steam pipe while reciting “who’s a sexy ship” the ship gets so excited the guns fire.”
I had to list off every fuel pump in the engine room during one of my boards for (Machinery watch I think). Something like 93 pumps, but I don't remember them all anymore. It's not necessarily about memorizing, but being able to think critically about systems and how they interact. You don't memorize the pumps, you have to walk your brain through every system in front of your peers to prove you understand the systems.
@@JoshuaTootell I was a 12b in the US army. (Combat Engineer) We may not have had pumps, etc, but we did have stuff that went boom in a lot of different ways. And there was always some new way to make something go boom. So for us it was more about human behavior rather than knowing every type of landmine made. If you know the most common places people put mines, well, you have an advantage. Still wont stop someone from making a landmine out of a laundry detergent bottle, but you at least know that guy is more likely to put it near that bush that makes you walk a little closer to the center of the road.
I'll clear this up a little bit; each gun can be fired from (with trigger counts): Forward Main Bat Plot (2) Aft Main Bat Plot (2) Forward Sec Bat Plot x2 (4) [Each secondary plotting room has two stable elements and trigger arrays] Aft Sec Bat Plot x2 (4) Forward Main Director (1-2) [unclear if the directors have single triggers or separated mode triggers like plotting rooms] Aft Main Director (1-2) Conn Tower Main Director (1-2) Forward Sec Director (1-2) Stbd Sec Director (1-2) Port Sec Director (1-2) Aft Sec Director (1-2) The individual gun's gun pit, manually (9) [by the gun's Hammer Operator?] The gun's turret sight setter position, left (3) The gun's turret sight setter position, right (3) The gun's turret trainer position (3) The individual gun's pointer position (9) For a total of 18 positions and 24-31 triggers able to touch off any individual gun, with a total of 40 firing positions and 46-53 total trigger devices across the entire ship.
@@AnimeSunglasses Nice ; ) 9 for each director/plotting room, 3 for each turret controller (Sight Setters and Trainers), 1 for each gun controller (Hammer Operator and Pointer)
I assume in the order that Ryan listed was more or less the hierarchy of who could fire, but who decided when to shift from that ie all plots and directors are down, up to the turrets? Were the positions all locked out to preclude accidental fire? Or is that an entire another question: how many safeties?
@@tracyo868 Good question. I imagine directors and plotting rooms would have override control over individual positions, but that is my speculation and how I would design the systems. The manual percussive fire almost certainly has no such interlock or override, though there are like 3-4 dudes in each gun pit. It also helps that no one person can control the entire firing cycle.
@@tracyo868 the setting of the large bank of selection switches in the plotting rooms controls which barrel is connected to which key. There are also switches in the turret to complete the circuits. They have shown them some during the video on the turret control booth.
Ryan did his usual great job. It is important to remember that within each turret the firing keys are basically all in series. When you are in local control (normally the only time the turret firing keys would be active) they all have to be used unless the turret officer bypasses them. He can do that on his indicator panel. So in local control you need the gun layers and train operator to match pointers or respond to verbal commands and when ready they close their keys. The sight setter inputs deflection and angle. The sight trainer closes his key when on target and the sight pointer closes his key normally on the up roll. BANG! Only ever did that once in a live fire training exercise. So while the turret officer has the ultimate control of circuit 1PA (firing circuit) he really has no need of a firing key. In local control the sight pointer is in the best position to fire the gun. Bob Lian Turret 2 Officer 1981-1984
@@andrewbaudo7961 There seems to be some confusion about who has control over the firing circuit. So to be clear the turret officer has absolute control of the firing circuit for the guns in his turret at all times. He does that through the turret officer’s selector (selective) panel located on the forward bulkhead of the booth near his periscope. It is an all brass box with two rotary switches. Each switch has 3 positions. Top switch is Director- Off - Local; bottom switch is AC - Off - Battery. With the top switch in Director he can relinquish firing circuit control to the plotting rooms (this is the primary mode). Off - no one can fire. In Local only the firing keys in the turret can be used. The bottom switch is the power supply for the circuit. AC is normal. Battery can only be used in local control. The reason there are so many keys in the turret is you are relying upon the men at those various stations to match pointers or otherwise input the necessary information at their station then they will close the key at their station. The sight pointer should be the last to close his key after the turret officer has hit the salvo alarm.
So, if their's enough left of the ship to have a gun to fire, there will be some way to fire it. Given a battleship starts as a bunch of big barrels that are then wrapped in armor and then wrapped in a ship hull, ensuring those guns keep firing no matter what seems perfectly reasonable.
@@benjaminshropshire2900 Not to the bullethead in the video who seems either weirded out or finds it hilarious that battleships had a ton of redundancy built into them.
@@benjaminshropshire2900 The Royal Navy battlecruiser HMS Hood was blown in half by an aft main magazine detonation, as its bow rose into the air and sunk its forward turrets fired a final salvo just before the barrels slipped below the waves, their gun crews were operating the guns in the darkness of emergency lighting, using hand cranks to train the turrets and firing them using local controls with the entire gunhouse tilted at a crazy angle. Its crazy how such a mortally wounded ship in the process of rapidly sinking after being *blown in half* was still able to operate its main battery before it went under, the levels of redundancy are insane.
Ask Dr. John Scholes - He is the master fire control authority amongst the Museum fleet. He recently filmed a special series of videos with Drachinifel aboard New Jersey while she was in Drydock #3 at Philadelphia. The release date is still to be announced, watch for them on UA-cam.
The level of redundancy is ideal for gold-plater capital gun ships. They aren't mass-produced, so you want them to survive 999 out of 1000 combat scenarios.
This is why Ryan is such an amazing curator! Also, I don't think many more backups are needed. If the lanyards for percussive firing aren't working, then that means no other method of firing would work either. The turret was likely completely knocked out by that point.
@@vbscript2 At first I thought he was going to say there was a guy with an actual hammer who would whack a spot on the breech to drive the firing pin. Now that would be cool.
Even a tank has lots of redundancy. The Gunner can fire the gun from triggers on each side of his power control handles, the manual elevation crank, and a "master blaster" manual firing device. The Tank Commander also has a trigger on his Commanders override. Making a total of 5 triggers to fire a tank main gun.
Hey Ryan! Long time fan of your channel and of the fast battleships. I live close to the USS Alabama and went there recently and was able to go into the plotting room and firing room! There was a volunteer who was working in there and let me walk in and look around which was amazing to see all of the computers, and triggers up close. He also had a bunch of blueprints from the 40s which were also really cool as well. He then told me some of the plans he wants to do like adding a firing simulator like the USS Iowa has. I hope to volunteer with him and help out with preserving the amazing ship. Thanks for posting all of the amazing information, your videos help me out to learn more about these amazing ships and I hope more people in my generation (gen z) gets more interested in the preservation parts of these ships so we can keep them around as long as we can! Thanks again and I hope to be able to visit the New Jersey one day as well :)
I love these ships! A story from real life. A former colleague of mine, Bo Dunér, had served in the Swedish Navy on a destroyer. They went down to Portugal (?) for an international fleet meeting. The destroyer that my friend was on, anchored close to a Iowa class battleship. His words were: It felt like we were a dinghy😅
So you predecessor might be right if he was referring to the number of locations outside the gun house that can fire the guns. Forward main plot, Aft main plot, forward secondary plot, aft plot, 3 main directors, 4 secondary directors. Those locations might have multiple triggers but you have to go to one of those 11 rooms to fire all 9 guns. Sight setters, hammer lanyards, trainers, and pointers all being positions inside the turret and only able to fire 1-3 guns.
About 15 years ago, my wife and I were standing on the Missouri in about 2 1/2 weeks, my wife and I are gonna be standing on the New Jersey. I hope to see you Ryan
Awesome job, thank you! The designers of the Iowa class did a phenomenal job, making sure that the ship could take hits and keep on fighting. That was how she carried out her reason for being, thanks to her courageous, well-trained and dedicated crew. Thank you to all those souls that served.
This doesn’t really surprise me. Seeing as the 16” guns are the MAIN weapon, it only makes sense to have MANY places that will keep the ship in combat 🤠
This was cool, but no pics or video of the actual alt triggers and where? I always look forward every day to a new video, so very interesting. Thanks so much for your hard work. AdamB
Yes, at about 5:30 into the video you'll see a massive switch board that controls what controls what and changes what controls what. That is also duplicated in other areas.
My guess, and its a WAG, is that they are all "ORed". That is that all are active at the same time. Though, that said, if any one gets jammed in the "ON", or triggering position, due to damage, there needs to be some way to disconnect it, remotely. So real deep down eyeballing of the engineering plans need to be reviewed. Nothing's ever simple.
@@michaelmoorrees3585 They are not all active - as BrianGulley pointed out, that giant switchboard is part of the system for assigning control of various turrets to each of the many redundant director locations. In the 16” gun turrets there are similar switch panels, ultimately making it possible to take local control if communication to the other gun directors was lost.
Interesting to hear about the levels of redundancy built in. It would be interesting to know what protected communications and procedures were in place so that the command could be passed successfully between methods, when, in the heat of combat, a particular method had been knocked out. And to think of the conditions these sailors had to work under!
I thought someone already wrote a famous autobiographical sketch on this and said that the wonderful thing about triggers is that they were the only one.
The wonderful thing about triggers is triggered are wonderful things their grips are made with some rubber their switch is made with the spring. Their bounce trouncy fun, fun, great big guns...
So much redundancy, I love it, and when you think about it, it makes sense! if anything more redundancy would further serve the ships one purpose outside of being a ship, And that is to fire those guns. so in conclusion whatever redundancies you can add that allow the ship to continue its two primary functions are a positive in my book! more wheel houses! more engine rooms! more power plants! more guns! and if I can't fire that gun by simultaneously flushing all of the toilets in the bathroom, we have somehow failed in our quest for redundancy!
Might you consider posting a “Trigger Warning” with this video?? Or, perhaps, “No Gunner’s Mates were chagrined in the making of this video.” LOL. Love your work, Ryan.
Years ago I was at Dahlgren VA NSWC for a few weeks when they were refurbishing the 16 inch guns off the New Jersey. They would test them by firing them into the Potomac. My coworkers had been there for some time before me and had experienced the testing before. A loud siren went off before the test and I remember an old lady - who had probably had worked there for many years - poked her head in the door and exclaimed "They are firing off the 16 inch gun!!" I figured if she was excited this must be something special and I should pay attention. My coworkers started staring at me to get my reaction. There was a tremendous explosion that shook the building we were in - the window blinds - which were down - flipped up hit the ceiling. I was stunned and my coworkers started laughing at my reaction. I can't imagine being on a ship when multiple guns are going off during a battle. These were some really brave people.
It's nice to know they designed that Battleship with so many ways to fire the main guns. They were taking NO chances that when in the heat of battle and if crews were killed or if the ship had sustained very heavy damage and the crew was cut off from one another and may or may not have been in the process of sinking, that the Captain could be absolutely sure those big guns could still go BOOOOMMM!
The Iowas were designed by the Department of Redundancy Department within BuShips, with her fire control system designed by their counterparts, the Redundant Department of Redundancy Department, within BuOrd
Redundancy is of paramount importance. You exist to shoot the big guns AND are expected to receive hits from huge, very destructive projetiles, like the 380s and the Yamato 406
It'd be great to be able to learn how many of those 46 firing options were ever used to fire the guns -- both in training and in combat. Probably a curator's lifetime of research just for that one bit of info, though.
I can't imagine a battleship like New Jersey coming to the point in a battle when a sailor with a lanyard tied to the hammer on each barrel is waiting for the command "Fire on my order" in his headset. The ship would have to be torn to shreds by that point.
Not necessarily. An electrical power failure could disable all but the mechanical lanyard system! Of course the turret would be unable to train or elevate the guns, but I can see the desire to unload the guns! It would be an emergency backup, but remember the South Dakota which suffered an electrical failure at the Second Battle of Guadalcanal.
How did they establish priority for each of the stations and ensure that that with the highest priority controlled the firing, and how did they transfer responsibility when a lower priority station had to take over?
Yeah, heavy redundancies are a thing for battleships. While their mission is to beat the daylights out of whatever they are sent against, there is always the possibility of getting the stuffing kicked out of them in return. So being able to keep fighting even after their bell has been rung repeatedly is a design requirement. When I think of how many places I want to have able to shoot the guns from, I end up with a pretty similar list to what you have given here. I would start with a manual firing mechanism on the gun itself, so that any gun that is intact can always be fired by someone at the gun, and after that, I would have a trigger at every position whose job is directly related to how the guns are pointed (Elevation and Traverse), as those positions are the closest a ship has to the gunner of a tank turret, then there would be one in the control room of the turrets, where people can be feed data from the rest of the ship and can give the necessary commands to point the guns in the correct direction, which is collectively equivalent to the 'Commander' position in a tank turret. After that, any position capable of feeding the guns the data they need to engage a target, which would be the various plotting rooms and fire directors. I am not surprised about not fining a trigger by the rangefinders, and I would hazard a guess that there isn't one in the radar rooms either, as while those areas can get target data, they don't have actual control over where the guns are pointing. By extension, I don't think the plotting rooms and fire directors have physical control of the guns, but they do serve as a central point where target data can be gathered and acted on without bloating the control rooms in the turrets themselves, and having their own triggers simply gives a better reaction time when it is decided to actually shoot. Interestingly, that same list of where I start and end with the firing mechanisms, is the opposite of the order in which I would prefer to actually USE the guns. The central fire directors and plotting rooms have the best information available to engage a target, the control rooms in the turrets are the next spot, as they have overall command of the individual turrets and can still get data for targeting, but they lose some ability to coordinate with the other turrets quickly. The guys actually controlling where the guns point have the control to point the guns wherever they need to, but are entirely reliant on someone else telling them where to point as they don't have direct access to the data to figure out where the target is. And the poor guy on the lanyard his utterly powerless to chose where the gun is pointing, and is at the mercy of his fellows to point the gun, and waiting for someone to yell 'FIRE".
battleships go into battle... which means any redundancy is not enough. I've not been to a real battle, but, I have heard that it is impossible to describe how much chaos and havoc it can create... during the battle of Tsushima, it was reported some of the ships managed to score hits even as there hulls were so warped and burning it was impossible to tell a French-built pre-dreadnaught from a Ironclad monitor... also, we know the hood continued firing (if uselessly) even as it's hull "stood like a spire in the water"... I wonder if there was anywhere a battleship equivalent of a dead-mans hand, where a ship would continue firing a pre-set pattern even as its devoid of all life.
Lots of firing positions , but I expect many would be linked to fewer actual firing circuits and there will be interlocks to make sure they are ready and safe to fire . There was an amazing amount of redundancy on these older ships as they had to keep fighting when taking hits to survive .
Honestly, the triggers at the gun barrels are probably the last amount of redundancy the ship needs. If they can't fire the guns like an age of sail flint lock, then the ship is probably a mission kill at best.
It also serves as a way for the Gun Captain to try to clear a "Hot Gun" if necessary, to prevent a shell or charges from "cooking off" and detonating in the breech if a malfunction prevents it being triggered from anywhere else. Bad things tend to happen if you get a breech explosion.
the breech should have a long skinny screwed shaft to unscrew from the breech to make a skinny hole to within the breech so if all else fails the turret crew can unscrew it, grab a Fuze string, shove er in and light it... like a cannon
Interesting to realize that even in an Iowa class BB, there are things that a Gunner's Mate from the days of 'Old Ironsides' can comprehend ... gun triggers and lanyards. Regarding what might seem as an insane level of redundancy, these are things you would be glad to have if you and your shipmates found yourselves in a fight for your very lives, what these ships were designed for.
Best check each gun tube to see if there's a place to put in a piece of green fuse. I'm sure there's a Ronson or Zippo holder close by. You may just be surprised. ;-)
And the idea of one someplace really weird like the Captain's or Admiral's cabin (or, better yet, in the head attached to their cabin) is not entirely implausible. I believe some modern submarines (and perhaps other ships) have repeater screens in the Captain's cabin that not only give the skipper access to a great deal of ship information, but also permit multiple actions, including firing weapons? The problem with this on a WWII era ship is that the information they'd need is not nearly as centralized. It's unlikely the Captain would have any way of aiming the main battery from bed, while a modern sub skipper just might... Somewhere on the Captain's or Admiral's bridge would seem likely - could be useful in shore bombardment, where aiming with binoculars could actually work.
A couple of questions: How do they coordinate which position is actually responsible for firing the guns at any point in time? How do the turret crews let all these different positions that the guns are loaded and ready to fire?
How accurate/consistent grouping are a battleship's 16" guns? In rifle shooting we use the term "minutes of angle" where 1 MOA would be roughly 1 inch of dispersion per 100 yards for the group size. I am curious how a 16" gun would do.
Ryan.. Nice hunting and documenting. For all the positions you found triggers, how many had the means to calculate turret and barrel positions for each gun and get that information to whoever could correctly position the guns? Or put another way, how many 'choke points' along the pathways to the get a signal into the barrel to 'light the fuse' are there and where are they?
Thank you, Ryan. I had no idea there were so many triggers for the 16-inch guns. Now I have another question you may be able to answer. How can 660 pounds of powder burn instantaneously when the guns are fired? I am a World War II buff and have read extensively about those guns, but I have never found an answer to this question. It intrigues me, because that's an awful lot of powder. The science behind it baffles me. Thank you for your fine videos. My interest in battleships started when I grew up in Rhode Island, and spent countless hours in Fall River on the Massachusetts.
Okay the fact that you can fire these guns Yosemite Sam style with a lanyard makes me smile nine different ways. We may not be really aiming at anything but these guns going off has to scare the living shit out of the enemy
My question is: The crew is loading and firing the main guns doing a shore bombardment. The crew has just finished loading and closing the breach when the captain orders cease fire. What is done then with the loaded gun? Probably don’t want to keep it loaded. Is it manually unloaded? Or fired in a safe direction?
I took my family on Saturday and we had a great time. My 12yr old truly enjoyed it. The only disappointment was that we were offered to shoot the 40mm and I assumed it was the anti aircraft gun. If I had known it was the signal gun I probably would have not done it.
There are 9 16 inch guns on the ship, which means that there are TWO different ways to count how many triggers there are on the ship. Firstly of all is the question, "How many triggers are there that first just a single gun, the center gun of Turret One as an example?" The other way to answer that question, is "How many triggers are there that can fire any 16 inch gun?"
So what positions have priority over the rest under normal conditions? and what safety measures are there in place someone doesn't fire it from another place without authority?
Keeping in mind that a firing position still would need to be connected in a way to the turret, you will reach at some point a level where you could add more positions, but you cannot route your cabling in a unique enough way that it would still function when the rest was shot to bits. I guess that is why they decided at some point that this is all she is going to get. In the end you really have 2 levels of redundancy with branches in each, those which make use of the equipment to fire accurate shots (range finders, radar, gryros etc) and those which are more along the lines of eyeball it and shoot and hope, cause clearly if that is what you end up doing, the ship and her crew are having one hell of a bad day and it is not likely going to make that much of a difference, but it sure feels good to still shoot back.
Leaves one to wonder how other US battleships & even other nation's battleships compared to the Iowa having this level of redundancy. Not to mention it clarifies just how automated fire control is from the main plotting rooms so long as they remain intact along with connections.
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“And lastly, if you stand in front of frame 26, starboard, and tickle the left most steam pipe while reciting “who’s a sexy ship” the ship gets so excited the guns fire.”
🎼🎶 *_I'm too sexy for my ship…_* 🎵
Is that a 16 inch salvo in your pocket or are you just happy to see me? Kitchy Kitchy Koo!
The worst part is I know when sailors were qualifying for surface warfare they had to be able to recite all the firing mechanisms from memory.
If you’re going to be dealing with pressure and explosions at that scale, I feel like that’s probably at least the basic things you should know.
Oddly enough I guessed 46 in the beginning
I had to list off every fuel pump in the engine room during one of my boards for (Machinery watch I think). Something like 93 pumps, but I don't remember them all anymore.
It's not necessarily about memorizing, but being able to think critically about systems and how they interact. You don't memorize the pumps, you have to walk your brain through every system in front of your peers to prove you understand the systems.
@@JoshuaTootell I was a 12b in the US army. (Combat Engineer) We may not have had pumps, etc, but we did have stuff that went boom in a lot of different ways. And there was always some new way to make something go boom. So for us it was more about human behavior rather than knowing every type of landmine made. If you know the most common places people put mines, well, you have an advantage. Still wont stop someone from making a landmine out of a laundry detergent bottle, but you at least know that guy is more likely to put it near that bush that makes you walk a little closer to the center of the road.
I'll clear this up a little bit; each gun can be fired from (with trigger counts):
Forward Main Bat Plot (2)
Aft Main Bat Plot (2)
Forward Sec Bat Plot x2 (4) [Each secondary plotting room has two stable elements and trigger arrays]
Aft Sec Bat Plot x2 (4)
Forward Main Director (1-2) [unclear if the directors have single triggers or separated mode triggers like plotting rooms]
Aft Main Director (1-2)
Conn Tower Main Director (1-2)
Forward Sec Director (1-2)
Stbd Sec Director (1-2)
Port Sec Director (1-2)
Aft Sec Director (1-2)
The individual gun's gun pit, manually (9) [by the gun's Hammer Operator?]
The gun's turret sight setter position, left (3)
The gun's turret sight setter position, right (3)
The gun's turret trainer position (3)
The individual gun's pointer position (9)
For a total of 18 positions and 24-31 triggers able to touch off any individual gun, with a total of 40 firing positions and 46-53 total trigger devices across the entire ship.
Now I'm trying to categorize them by how many of the guns the can fire...
@@AnimeSunglasses Nice ; ) 9 for each director/plotting room, 3 for each turret controller (Sight Setters and Trainers), 1 for each gun controller (Hammer Operator and Pointer)
I assume in the order that Ryan listed was more or less the hierarchy of who could fire, but who decided when to shift from that ie all plots and directors are down, up to the turrets?
Were the positions all locked out to preclude accidental fire? Or is that an entire another question: how many safeties?
@@tracyo868 Good question. I imagine directors and plotting rooms would have override control over individual positions, but that is my speculation and how I would design the systems. The manual percussive fire almost certainly has no such interlock or override, though there are like 3-4 dudes in each gun pit.
It also helps that no one person can control the entire firing cycle.
@@tracyo868 the setting of the large bank of selection switches in the plotting rooms controls which barrel is connected to which key. There are also switches in the turret to complete the circuits. They have shown them some during the video on the turret control booth.
Ryan did his usual great job. It is important to remember that within each turret the firing keys are basically all in series. When you are in local control (normally the only time the turret firing keys would be active) they all have to be used unless the turret officer bypasses them. He can do that on his indicator panel. So in local control you need the gun layers and train operator to match pointers or respond to verbal commands and when ready they close their keys. The sight setter inputs deflection and angle. The sight trainer closes his key when on target and the sight pointer closes his key normally on the up roll. BANG! Only ever did that once in a live fire training exercise. So while the turret officer has the ultimate control of circuit 1PA (firing circuit) he really has no need of a firing key. In local control the sight pointer is in the best position to fire the gun.
Bob Lian Turret 2 Officer 1981-1984
That makes all the sense in the world. Thank you.
So if the turret keys are turned none of the other triggers are active?
@@andrewbaudo7961 There seems to be some confusion about who has control over the firing circuit. So to be clear the turret officer has absolute control of the firing circuit for the guns in his turret at all times. He does that through the turret officer’s selector (selective) panel located on the forward bulkhead of the booth near his periscope. It is an all brass box with two rotary switches. Each switch has 3 positions. Top switch is Director- Off - Local; bottom switch is AC - Off - Battery. With the top switch in Director he can relinquish firing circuit control to the plotting rooms (this is the primary mode). Off - no one can fire. In Local only the firing keys in the turret can be used. The bottom switch is the power supply for the circuit. AC is normal. Battery can only be used in local control. The reason there are so many keys in the turret is you are relying upon the men at those various stations to match pointers or otherwise input the necessary information at their station then they will close the key at their station. The sight pointer should be the last to close his key after the turret officer has hit the salvo alarm.
@@robertlian2009 thank you for the explanation.
the way you tell it, there's bound to be a random closet in the admiral's quarters that has the gun triggers too
I'm surprised the Combat Information Center doesn't have a set of triggers.
So basically the purpose of a battleship (to dump massive rounds down range) will always be preserved in the event of damage.
So, if their's enough left of the ship to have a gun to fire, there will be some way to fire it. Given a battleship starts as a bunch of big barrels that are then wrapped in armor and then wrapped in a ship hull, ensuring those guns keep firing no matter what seems perfectly reasonable.
@@benjaminshropshire2900 Not to the bullethead in the video who seems either weirded out or finds it hilarious that battleships had a ton of redundancy built into them.
@@benjaminshropshire2900 The Royal Navy battlecruiser HMS Hood was blown in half by an aft main magazine detonation, as its bow rose into the air and sunk its forward turrets fired a final salvo just before the barrels slipped below the waves, their gun crews were operating the guns in the darkness of emergency lighting, using hand cranks to train the turrets and firing them using local controls with the entire gunhouse tilted at a crazy angle. Its crazy how such a mortally wounded ship in the process of rapidly sinking after being *blown in half* was still able to operate its main battery before it went under, the levels of redundancy are insane.
Ask Dr. John Scholes - He is the master fire control authority amongst the Museum fleet. He recently filmed a special series of videos with Drachinifel aboard New Jersey while she was in Drydock #3 at Philadelphia. The release date is still to be announced, watch for them on UA-cam.
Ship Builder: So how many triggers do you want in your ship?
US Government: Yes.
As long as you are still afloat you need to be able to fire the guns.
great.🎉
who i aiming again?😳
Unless your turrets have been blown to bits!
WW2 damage control would agree
The level of redundancy is ideal for gold-plater capital gun ships. They aren't mass-produced, so you want them to survive 999 out of 1000 combat scenarios.
This is why Ryan is such an amazing curator! Also, I don't think many more backups are needed. If the lanyards for percussive firing aren't working, then that means no other method of firing would work either. The turret was likely completely knocked out by that point.
haha, yeah, that was my thought. If the lanyards can't fire them, you're done anyway.
@@vbscript2 At first I thought he was going to say there was a guy with an actual hammer who would whack a spot on the breech to drive the firing pin. Now that would be cool.
Even a tank has lots of redundancy. The Gunner can fire the gun from triggers on each side of his power control handles, the manual elevation crank, and a "master blaster" manual firing device. The Tank Commander also has a trigger on his Commanders override. Making a total of 5 triggers to fire a tank main gun.
What amazing pieces of equipment those ships were.
Hey Ryan! Long time fan of your channel and of the fast battleships. I live close to the USS Alabama and went there recently and was able to go into the plotting room and firing room! There was a volunteer who was working in there and let me walk in and look around which was amazing to see all of the computers, and triggers up close. He also had a bunch of blueprints from the 40s which were also really cool as well. He then told me some of the plans he wants to do like adding a firing simulator like the USS Iowa has. I hope to volunteer with him and help out with preserving the amazing ship. Thanks for posting all of the amazing information, your videos help me out to learn more about these amazing ships and I hope more people in my generation (gen z) gets more interested in the preservation parts of these ships so we can keep them around as long as we can! Thanks again and I hope to be able to visit the New Jersey one day as well :)
I’ve been trying to volunteer at the Alabama for 7 months and haven’t heard back from them
They were going to have a blast no matter what.
I love these ships!
A story from real life. A former colleague of mine, Bo Dunér, had served in the Swedish Navy on a destroyer. They went down to Portugal (?) for an international fleet meeting. The destroyer that my friend was on, anchored close to a Iowa class battleship.
His words were:
It felt like we were a dinghy😅
Other than the Yamato class, the Iowas were the biggest warships until the post WW2 supercarriers.
Not surprised by the redundancy. The frigate I served on had only one 5”/54, and there were four different positions from which it could be fired.
Man after so many videos, your presentation has REALLY IMPROVED! Way to keep fighting the good fight!
So you predecessor might be right if he was referring to the number of locations outside the gun house that can fire the guns.
Forward main plot, Aft main plot, forward secondary plot, aft plot, 3 main directors, 4 secondary directors.
Those locations might have multiple triggers but you have to go to one of those 11 rooms to fire all 9 guns.
Sight setters, hammer lanyards, trainers, and pointers all being positions inside the turret and only able to fire 1-3 guns.
To know your purpose is to live a life of direction, and in that direction is found peace and tranquillity.
About 15 years ago, my wife and I were standing on the Missouri in about 2 1/2 weeks, my wife and I are gonna be standing on the New Jersey. I hope to see you Ryan
Awesome job, thank you! The designers of the Iowa class did a phenomenal job, making sure that the ship could take hits and keep on fighting. That was how she carried out her reason for being, thanks to her courageous, well-trained and dedicated crew. Thank you to all those souls that served.
This doesn’t really surprise me.
Seeing as the 16” guns are the MAIN weapon, it only makes sense to have MANY places that will keep the ship in combat 🤠
Since we've gone this far, how about a touch hole and a bucket with a smoldering match.
If I ain't got nothin' left, that would work as well as anything !
You want to touch what with what?!
A cigarette would probably work in a pinch.
Your presentation is much…much better than older videos…. Good job!
Could you imagine being the guy to pull the lanyard on a percussive charge to fire one of those guns? Wow!
This was cool, but no pics or video of the actual alt triggers and where?
I always look forward every day to a new video, so very interesting. Thanks so much for your hard work.
AdamB
"46 triggers sounds just right." ~Goldilocks the Gunbunny
That is very interesting. Thanks, Ryan and Libby.
Have any of the New Jersey's guns actually been fired by lanyard? Argggh, matey we need to know
If there are 48 triggers to fire the main battery. Were they all active all the time, or was there mechanism to select which trigger was active?
I was gonna ask the same thing. could someone fire a gun when most were not ready?
Yes, at about 5:30 into the video you'll see a massive switch board that controls what controls what and changes what controls what. That is also duplicated in other areas.
My guess, and its a WAG, is that they are all "ORed". That is that all are active at the same time. Though, that said, if any one gets jammed in the "ON", or triggering position, due to damage, there needs to be some way to disconnect it, remotely. So real deep down eyeballing of the engineering plans need to be reviewed. Nothing's ever simple.
@@michaelmoorrees3585 They are not all active - as BrianGulley pointed out, that giant switchboard is part of the system for assigning control of various turrets to each of the many redundant director locations. In the 16” gun turrets there are similar switch panels, ultimately making it possible to take local control if communication to the other gun directors was lost.
I believe there are switches in the gun houses which can also influence where control originates.
Interesting to hear about the levels of redundancy built in. It would be interesting to know what protected communications and procedures were in place so that the command could be passed successfully between methods, when, in the heat of combat, a particular method had been knocked out. And to think of the conditions these sailors had to work under!
“Hey I found a trigger, I wonder what it does if I squeeze it?” *BOOM* “Oh.” 😅😅😅
Roy Rogers' horse would be proud!
👏
The stuffed Trigger is currently owned by RFD-TV 🐎
Showing our age...
By the time you got to the last one I was half expecting you to tell us there was one more in the captains cabin or personal head.
These videos are great! I try to watch the videos from the Iowa, but I’ve been spoiled by the way Ryan does his.
Love at first sight is easy to understand; its when two people have been looking at each other for a lifetime that it becomes a miracle.
Thanks!
Few people know this but originally the NJ was designed to be a series of triggers welded together for maxim redundancy.
Well, actually, they were designed to be riveted together. Weld was a last minute change, and they still didn't really trust it....
@@thebitcoinimist Welding was invented to be a trigger for the main cannons in NJ
Something went wrong with editing in a couple of places 😅. Great video regardless.
lol, one thing a battleship gotta *always* be able to do is battle! 👍
Some more archive footage of the room in action would be cool too. Thanks well done .
Seems like a cool guy, also possibly a little acoustic which is awesome!
I thought someone already wrote a famous autobiographical sketch on this and said that the wonderful thing about triggers is that they were the only one.
Ah, easy mistake, especially with the amount of springs involved...
I believe your thinking of The Highlander. 😊
The wonderful thing about triggers is triggered are wonderful things their grips are made with some rubber their switch is made with the spring. Their bounce trouncy fun, fun, great big guns...
I did a unrep with the New Jersey in the Atlantic once when heading to the Med, back i9n the early 80's, impressive ship I might add.
Battle stations, battle stations. Man your triggers!
So much redundancy, I love it, and when you think about it, it makes sense! if anything more redundancy would further serve the ships one purpose outside of being a ship, And that is to fire those guns. so in conclusion whatever redundancies you can add that allow the ship to continue its two primary functions are a positive in my book! more wheel houses! more engine rooms! more power plants! more guns! and if I can't fire that gun by simultaneously flushing all of the toilets in the bathroom, we have somehow failed in our quest for redundancy!
Might you consider posting a “Trigger Warning” with this video?? Or, perhaps, “No Gunner’s Mates were chagrined in the making of this video.” LOL. Love your work, Ryan.
A "Trigger Warning" would be hilarious.
Years ago I was at Dahlgren VA NSWC for a few weeks when they were refurbishing the 16 inch guns off the New Jersey. They would test them by firing them into the Potomac. My coworkers had been there for some time before me and had experienced the testing before. A loud siren went off before the test and I remember an old lady - who had probably had worked there for many years - poked her head in the door and exclaimed "They are firing off the 16 inch gun!!" I figured if she was excited this must be something special and I should pay attention. My coworkers started staring at me to get my reaction. There was a tremendous explosion that shook the building we were in - the window blinds - which were down - flipped up hit the ceiling. I was stunned and my coworkers started laughing at my reaction. I can't imagine being on a ship when multiple guns are going off during a battle. These were some really brave people.
🎵 The wonderful thing about triggers is there is more than one...
Very interesting. Thank you.
It's nice to know they designed that Battleship with so many ways to fire the main guns. They were taking NO chances that when in the heat of battle and if crews were killed or if the ship had sustained very heavy damage and the crew was cut off from one another and may or may not have been in the process of sinking, that the Captain could be absolutely sure those big guns could still go BOOOOMMM!
Lol the editor didn't edit out a few parts. Very educational video. I'd love to take a tour of the New Jersey one day.
you must also beat the ship in a game of tabletop battleship before being able to fire the gun
Makes sense. You’d want very redundant firing ability.
I never imagined you could still fire a gun on the battleship like you could one of the most civil War cannons
The Iowas were designed by the Department of Redundancy Department within BuShips, with her fire control system designed by their counterparts, the Redundant Department of Redundancy Department, within BuOrd
On Chieftain (tank) we had 3 ways to legitimately fire our main armament, with a fourth being highly discouraged.
Redundancy is of paramount importance. You exist to shoot the big guns AND are expected to receive hits from huge, very destructive projetiles, like the 380s and the Yamato 406
It'd be great to be able to learn how many of those 46 firing options were ever used to fire the guns -- both in training and in combat. Probably a curator's lifetime of research just for that one bit of info, though.
I can't imagine a battleship like New Jersey coming to the point in a battle when a sailor with a lanyard tied to the hammer on each barrel is waiting for the command "Fire on my order" in his headset. The ship would have to be torn to shreds by that point.
Not necessarily. An electrical power failure could disable all but the mechanical lanyard system!
Of course the turret would be unable to train or elevate the guns, but I can see the desire to unload the guns!
It would be an emergency backup, but remember the South Dakota which suffered an electrical failure at the Second Battle of Guadalcanal.
Gives the movie Navy a place to have a grizzled captain to yell, "Drop the hammers!"" and have a full broadside go to destroy the enemy. 😂
Oh man... I have been so busy and things going so fast with USS New Jersey I need to take a day and just binge watch all of the updates!!
Through perseverance many people win success out of what seemed destined to be certain failure.
Ryan, you mentioned the 5inch control can fire the 16inch. Can you use the 16inch control to fire the 5inch? By the redundancy you name, Id say yes.
You'd never be firing the 5 inch and not firing the 16s. So if the 5 inch stable is down, you'd move those to manual.
I think 5-inch in anti-aircraft mode would be independent of the 16-inch?
For being a massive artillery platform at sea, I think that’s the perfect number of triggers lol
How did they establish priority for each of the stations and ensure that that with the highest priority controlled the firing, and how did they transfer responsibility when a lower priority station had to take over?
Can you imagine the level of damage and death that would occur to be reduced to using the lanyard?
Wow, that is amazing!
I love that at the end of the day, if everything has gone wrong and we’re on fire, someone can tie a string to a hammer and make things go boom 😊
A next video is needed to explain the process that determines which operator of the many will actually fir the guns.
That is why we roll the dice before setting sail ;-)
Yeah, heavy redundancies are a thing for battleships. While their mission is to beat the daylights out of whatever they are sent against, there is always the possibility of getting the stuffing kicked out of them in return. So being able to keep fighting even after their bell has been rung repeatedly is a design requirement. When I think of how many places I want to have able to shoot the guns from, I end up with a pretty similar list to what you have given here. I would start with a manual firing mechanism on the gun itself, so that any gun that is intact can always be fired by someone at the gun, and after that, I would have a trigger at every position whose job is directly related to how the guns are pointed (Elevation and Traverse), as those positions are the closest a ship has to the gunner of a tank turret, then there would be one in the control room of the turrets, where people can be feed data from the rest of the ship and can give the necessary commands to point the guns in the correct direction, which is collectively equivalent to the 'Commander' position in a tank turret. After that, any position capable of feeding the guns the data they need to engage a target, which would be the various plotting rooms and fire directors.
I am not surprised about not fining a trigger by the rangefinders, and I would hazard a guess that there isn't one in the radar rooms either, as while those areas can get target data, they don't have actual control over where the guns are pointing. By extension, I don't think the plotting rooms and fire directors have physical control of the guns, but they do serve as a central point where target data can be gathered and acted on without bloating the control rooms in the turrets themselves, and having their own triggers simply gives a better reaction time when it is decided to actually shoot.
Interestingly, that same list of where I start and end with the firing mechanisms, is the opposite of the order in which I would prefer to actually USE the guns. The central fire directors and plotting rooms have the best information available to engage a target, the control rooms in the turrets are the next spot, as they have overall command of the individual turrets and can still get data for targeting, but they lose some ability to coordinate with the other turrets quickly. The guys actually controlling where the guns point have the control to point the guns wherever they need to, but are entirely reliant on someone else telling them where to point as they don't have direct access to the data to figure out where the target is. And the poor guy on the lanyard his utterly powerless to chose where the gun is pointing, and is at the mercy of his fellows to point the gun, and waiting for someone to yell 'FIRE".
battleships go into battle...
which means any redundancy is not enough.
I've not been to a real battle, but, I have heard that it is impossible to describe how much chaos and havoc it can create... during the battle of Tsushima, it was reported some of the ships managed to score hits even as there hulls were so warped and burning it was impossible to tell a French-built pre-dreadnaught from a Ironclad monitor...
also, we know the hood continued firing (if uselessly) even as it's hull "stood like a spire in the water"...
I wonder if there was anywhere a battleship equivalent of a dead-mans hand, where a ship would continue firing a pre-set pattern even as its devoid of all life.
Lots of firing positions , but I expect many would be linked to fewer actual firing circuits and there will be interlocks to make sure they are ready and safe to fire . There was an amazing amount of redundancy on these older ships as they had to keep fighting when taking hits to survive .
They were meant to get into a brawls with other ships, and win.
Absolutely , nowadays it's all about detecting threats and not getting hit .
Honestly, the triggers at the gun barrels are probably the last amount of redundancy the ship needs. If they can't fire the guns like an age of sail flint lock, then the ship is probably a mission kill at best.
It also serves as a way for the Gun Captain to try to clear a "Hot Gun" if necessary, to prevent a shell or charges from "cooking off" and detonating in the breech if a malfunction prevents it being triggered from anywhere else. Bad things tend to happen if you get a breech explosion.
the breech should have a long skinny screwed shaft to unscrew from the breech to make a skinny hole to within the breech so if all else fails the turret crew can unscrew it, grab a Fuze string, shove er in and light it... like a cannon
Interesting to realize that even in an Iowa class BB, there are things that a Gunner's Mate from the days of 'Old Ironsides' can comprehend ... gun triggers and lanyards.
Regarding what might seem as an insane level of redundancy, these are things you would be glad to have if you and your shipmates found yourselves in a fight for your very lives, what these ships were designed for.
Best check each gun tube to see if there's a place to put in a piece of green fuse. I'm sure there's a Ronson or Zippo holder close by. You may just be surprised. ;-)
And the idea of one someplace really weird like the Captain's or Admiral's cabin (or, better yet, in the head attached to their cabin) is not entirely implausible. I believe some modern submarines (and perhaps other ships) have repeater screens in the Captain's cabin that not only give the skipper access to a great deal of ship information, but also permit multiple actions, including firing weapons? The problem with this on a WWII era ship is that the information they'd need is not nearly as centralized. It's unlikely the Captain would have any way of aiming the main battery from bed, while a modern sub skipper just might...
Somewhere on the Captain's or Admiral's bridge would seem likely - could be useful in shore bombardment, where aiming with binoculars could actually work.
Talk about redundancy
I like it!
Fascinating, thank you!
A couple of questions:
How do they coordinate which position is actually responsible for firing the guns at any point in time?
How do the turret crews let all these different positions that the guns are loaded and ready to fire?
I wonder how many crew were actually pulling the trigger when the order to fire came.
How accurate/consistent grouping are a battleship's 16" guns? In rifle shooting we use the term "minutes of angle" where 1 MOA would be roughly 1 inch of dispersion per 100 yards for the group size. I am curious how a 16" gun would do.
Ryan.. Nice hunting and documenting. For all the positions you found triggers, how many had the means to calculate turret and barrel positions for each gun and get that information to whoever could correctly position the guns? Or put another way, how many 'choke points' along the pathways to the get a signal into the barrel to 'light the fuse' are there and where are they?
WOW 46 triggers,, Holy crap.... Thanks
Redundant redundancies that are also redundant. The finest of naval traditions !:-)
Thank you, Ryan. I had no idea there were so many triggers for the 16-inch guns. Now I have another question you may be able to answer. How can 660 pounds of powder burn instantaneously when the guns are fired? I am a World War II buff and have read extensively about those guns, but I have never found an answer to this question. It intrigues me, because that's an awful lot of powder. The science behind it baffles me. Thank you for your fine videos. My interest in battleships started when I grew up in Rhode Island, and spent countless hours in Fall River on the Massachusetts.
Okay the fact that you can fire these guns Yosemite Sam style with a lanyard makes me smile nine different ways.
We may not be really aiming at anything but these guns going off has to scare the living shit out of the enemy
I'd like to see a video about the fire control switchboard.
My question is: The crew is loading and firing the main guns doing a shore bombardment. The crew has just finished loading and closing the breach when the captain orders cease fire.
What is done then with the loaded gun? Probably don’t want to keep it loaded. Is it manually unloaded? Or fired in a safe direction?
I took my family on Saturday and we had a great time. My 12yr old truly enjoyed it. The only disappointment was that we were offered to shoot the 40mm and I assumed it was the anti aircraft gun. If I had known it was the signal gun I probably would have not done it.
I am always doing that which I can not do, in order that I may learn how to do it.
There are 9 16 inch guns on the ship, which means that there are TWO different ways to count how many triggers there are on the ship. Firstly of all is the question, "How many triggers are there that first just a single gun, the center gun of Turret One as an example?" The other way to answer that question, is "How many triggers are there that can fire any 16 inch gun?"
The video goes black at 6:32, and there are moments where the audio cuts off.
Nobody else noticed. A glitch in your matrix.
I had same isauea @garywagner2466
It would be interesting to know if every one of these firing mechanisms was actually used to fire. I would say not, but probably tested electrically.
So what positions have priority over the rest under normal conditions? and what safety measures are there in place someone doesn't fire it from another place without authority?
Keeping in mind that a firing position still would need to be connected in a way to the turret, you will reach at some point a level where you could add more positions, but you cannot route your cabling in a unique enough way that it would still function when the rest was shot to bits. I guess that is why they decided at some point that this is all she is going to get. In the end you really have 2 levels of redundancy with branches in each, those which make use of the equipment to fire accurate shots (range finders, radar, gryros etc) and those which are more along the lines of eyeball it and shoot and hope, cause clearly if that is what you end up doing, the ship and her crew are having one hell of a bad day and it is not likely going to make that much of a difference, but it sure feels good to still shoot back.
Leaves one to wonder how other US battleships & even other nation's battleships compared to the Iowa having this level of redundancy. Not to mention it clarifies just how automated fire control is from the main plotting rooms so long as they remain intact along with connections.
heck, check the galley!