Flintlock76 Yes, some of the first Libertys did break in two during rough seas. The design flaw was noted and quickly corrected.
Yes, some of the first Libertys did break in two during rough seas. The design flaw was noted and quickly corrected.
The flaw was that the welded steel had a brittle transition temperature about the freezing point of water, i.e. the ships' hulls fractured in freezing weather. Investigation into the cause of the failures was headed by Earl Parker, who was also instrumental in the development of the theory of dislocations in metal grains (plastic deformation as opposed to elastic deformation).
Remember hearing about the Liberty Ship problem in my intro to Engineering Materials course at Cal - one of the professors was some guy named Earl Parker.
He (Goering) also said he flat-out knew the war was lost when the first P-51's showed up over Berlin.
Reminds of a WW2 story about a Mustang and Spitfire pilot arguing about what was the better fighter. The Mustang pilot challenged the Spitfire pilot to a dogfight - over Berlin.
54light15the idea with them was that they would have commercial value after the war. In the 1970s in Norfolk, you would see them on occasion tied up at the piers.
I have to wonder how many of them were tied up off Haverstraw or wherever as part of the Hudson River reserve fleet.
I recall when the John Brown was a school ship for future merchant mariners, tied up in Brooklyn. It came to Toronto on its way to a shipyard in Ohio to get some work done on the hull and I went for a cruise on it for an afternoon. You could tour the engine room but only on its upper levels. You could not go down to where the crankshaft was turning but you sure got a good view of that triple-expansion engine. The original electrical system of the ship was only 24 volts as I recall. There was a diesel generator in a deckhouse on the afterdeck to operate modern navigational equipment. The ship's lighting was still on 24 volts but I could be wrong about that.
The upper level of the forward hold was accessible and there were bunks and bathrooms from when it was used as a school ship. You could look way down into the lower levels of the hold as they were covered in heavy plexiglass and way down were several 6 x 6 trucks and a few Jeeps. Below the main deckhouse was a fully equipped machine shop and crew's quarters. The steam-powered deck winches were all functional.
The bridge was accessible and the forward view was terrible as there's only 3 small forward-facing windows. The ship is now controlled from a flying bridge on the upper weather deck with a canvas awning. It was sure no luxury liner, but it did lead to the building of Victory ships which were a vast improvement and the idea with them was that they would have commercial value after the war. In the 1970s in Norfolk, you would see them on occasion tied up at the piers. I don't know if any are left today.
After the war, the Granville S Hall was used during atom bomb testing in the Pacific. It had a large "bird bath" mounted on the foremast to catch fallout, and a washdown system to clear said fallout from the rest of the ship. That got tested while I was aboard as well (in the very early 1970's).
When I was on her, the bird bath was gone. A helipad had been added forward at some point, upon which was built a shelter for inflating weather balloons, which is why I was on board. The balloon tracker was on top of that shelter, meaning I scaled the thing daily to set it up for the day's run. Great fun in rolling seas...
Larry Resident Microferroequinologist (at least at my house) Everyone goes home; Safety begins with you My Opinion. Standard Disclaimers Apply. No Expiration Date Come ride the rails with me! There's one thing about humility - the moment you think you've got it, you've lost it...
Acouple of things...
54's vintage warbirds! Oh boy, that was like a visit with old friends! The lead footage is pretty unusual, it was shot in the Middle East, except for Lawrence of Arabia pretty much a forgotten front. Great shots of those Bristol fighters and Martinsydes!
We had the thrill of seeing the Liberty Ship John W. Brown passing under the Chesapeake Bay Bridge a few years ago while we were across it. Outbound on one of their occasional Bay cruises. A float on that ship is on our "one of these days" list.
Yes, some of the first Libertys did break in two during rough seas. The design flaw was noted and quickly corrected. In one of his interviews with US Army historians Hermann Goering said the German high command knew they were in deep trouble when they found out how fast those Liberty Ships were being turned out. As Goering said, "We were amazed! It takes us six months to build a Rhine river steamer!"
He also said he flat-out knew the war was lost when the first P-51's showed up over Berlin.
tree68The ship I was on is now razor blades (or fenders on your new Rolls Kanardly).
The John W. Brown is still operable and is docked in the Port of Baltimore. The Brown was constructed in the Bethlehem Steel Shipyard in the Fairfield section of Baltimore in 1942. Keel laid July 28, 1942 - In Service Sept. 19, 1942. Removed from service Nov. 19, 1946.
Never too old to have a happy childhood!
I spent several months aboard a Liberty ship one summer while in USAF (yes, I am a Shellback). It was reconfigured (slightly) as a research vessel.
The round bottom was wonderful in big waves (not). And I understand they had the undesirable habit of breaking apart at a certain frame - I think it was due to being built in two halves and being joined there.
Real speed demons, too. Eleven knots at 88 turns of the triple expansion steam reciprocating engine. And if she was doing that, the whole ship felt it...
But, they did what they were designed to do - haul cargo in mass quantities.
The ship I was on is now razor blades (or fenders on your new Rolls Kanardly).
One highlight of the trip, however, was a rushed trip out of Samoa to serve as a backup recovery ship for Apollo 13. There was an alternate landing site, and had they used that we would have been front and center on the recovery.
The building of war fish - Liberty & Victory Ships and more -
Materials supplied by trains
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LUm6xjXq3MU
A mobilization and training of manpower and the building of facilites that I doubt we will ever see again.
No trains here but vintage warbirds? Oh yeah.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dwrIf_5gEEM
The back cover of the December 2019 issue of Flying just arrived with a full page ad for Mooney Aircraft on the back cover.
In the S.Pac, the 380th and 90th B/G's would switch back and forth between the Texico/Shell/Standard refineries and the rail yards in the Saigon area as well as rail bridges north east of the city. Shipping was mostly done in by US submarines and the Japanese had to rely on rail.
I found a discussion of Mooney on a site called AvWeb, I was looking for additional information on Mooney.
The news story, plus reader's comments. I don't know enough about the subject to say whether they're right or wrong, they'll just have to speak for themselves.
It is interesting though.
https://www.avweb.com/aviation-news/mooney-shut-down-employees-furloughed/
It might be interesting to see how US business and private plane makers are doing. My hunch is they can't compete with overseas manufacturing.
Mooney went bankrupt in 2008; sat until 2013 when Henan Meijing (nominally a 'real-estate firm') bought them. In 2017 they took on a big chunk of Uber Elevate a day after their then-CEO quit.
I notice that the English-language site for Henan Meijing appears to be down, too, so I think this is not something that reflects poor Mooney International finishing the last waltz.
I'd dearly love to quote the old Mooney bumper-sticker version of the old ...do it... joke. But on this forum it might be "misunderstood". They were fine and great, and I have no particular doubt some version of them will be recapitalized and appear again 'under new ownership' if necessary.
That is sad, Mooney's a proud old name in General Aviation. They built good planes, many still flying decades after they left the factory.
The company that manufactured Mooney aircraft went bankrupt, locked up, dismissed all employees. Sad.
The allies wanted to cripple the axis oil supply. An article mention the costly air raids on the Ploesti oil fields and refineries were ordered because attacking rail yards was ineffective.
The aricle stated that the Germans used their massive supply of forced labor to quickly repair rail yards.
The Germans, especially as the war lingered on, used A LOT of Forced/Slave labor.. Who knows if the crews of the trains were German.....or French or Eastern European.
Whenever i see video of trains being shot up in France, in 1944, in preparation for D-day, i always wonder if it was the husband of some poor French Lady that was getting killed or hurt.
About the P-47- my Uncle Francis flew them and attacked trains in France and Germany. He said that he would shoot at them and steam would blow out, but never did say if it was leaking from bullet holes or if it was explosions. He was up in the air and didn't hang around. He would make a pass over them to allow the crew to escape but that was only in France. He retired as a Light Colonel in 1967 or thereabouts. We visited him when I was a kid at Westover AFB in Westfield, MA in 1963 during an open house day. There were B-47s taking off, a B-36 that was no longer active but was there as an exhibit and he had an F-86 as his personal transport. He also owned a 1962 Lincoln Continental that made a big impression on my 8 year old self. I've since owned two of 'em.
In all the combat footage I've seen of planes strafing trains I've never seen a boiler explosion due to machine gun fire. Typically what you do see is steam shooting out of the smokestack, I'm assuming from the flues being punctured and all that boiler pressure finding a nice, easy outlet.
Of course, I can't say boiler explosions due to strafing never happened, in fact there's an instance of a British locomotive exploding just as the German plane strafing it passed overhead, wrecking the airplane and killing the pilot. I believe I referenced the incident in a previous post. Possibly the German plane, a Focke-Wulf FW190, was cannon-armed, which would have done more damage than an American .50 cal. Browning would have done.
Hawker Tempests and Typhoons, great airplanes! Designed as fighters and not ground attack aircraft they still performed the latter role outstandingly.
I believe there are a few (very few) Tempests and Typhoons in museums, but no flying examples to my knowledge.
54's most likely correct, everyone on this Forum has probably seen "The Train," and probably more than once! But if you haven't, do so! Best railroad film ever!
duplicate post, sorry.
Killed while cleaning his gun was, I've heard, in the first news releases about the death of Ernest Hemingway. People couldn't accept it otherwise.
About the movie "The Train" honestly, who that follows this forum hasn't seen it? It's what turned me on to European trains and I've had a European layout since 1967. Not the same one but still.
Leo_AmesI wonder what made for the best train strafer in the European theater? I imagine it's a race between the USAAF P-47 and the RAF's Hawker Typhoon and Tempest.
.
When it comes to Air-To-Ground attacks during WW2, the best weapons platforms were easily the Hawker Typhoon and the P-47 Thunderbolt.
It could be debated endlessly which of these two should wear the crown, but really, nothing else came close to what these two could do to virtually any ground target when considering single manned aircraft.
I would give the number 3 position to the IL-2 of the Soviet Army, but that is just my oppinion, and it had a crew of 2 anyway.
Flintlock76I'd give slightly higher points to the Hawker Tempest and Typhoons since they had 20mm cannons. The USAAF never went into 20mm's in a big way, the .50 cal Brownings were considered more than adequate.
I think 8 .50 caliber machine guns is the definition of more than adequate.
Paul MilenkovicWhat happens when you shoot into a live boiler? Do you risk a boiler explosion and hence serious harm to the crew? Or does the resulting bullet hole leak steam without the boiler tearing itself apart?
I suppose that all depends on what you hit it with.
Light machine gun fire would probably put enough holes it it that it lost boiler pressure, and the crew would need to drop the fire, but it probably would not explode.
The combined force of 8 .50 caliber M2s from a P-47 might just rip the whole thing apart and it might explode.
I would love to see some real experimentation on this, that would make good TV!
From what I understand, WW2 pilots were told to attack a train low and from the front. I do not know if this was to prevent as much defensive fire from A/A guns as possible, or if that was the best way to inflict the most damage to the locomotive.
-Kevin
Living the dream.
Flintlock76And as far as "Killed while cleaning his gun..." is concerned a police detective explained to me years ago. "Well, if the decedent was a Catholic being a suicide he'd be denied the Last Rites of the Church, plus a Catholic burial service, and burial in a Catholic cemetery, suicide being a mortal sin as far as the Church is concerned."
I heard the same thing in the past, but only for religious reasons. Insurance companies are a different kettle of fish because of potential fraud discovery.
Overmod charlie hebdo An interesting and possibly troubled figure. David Niven, in Bring on the Empty Horses, describes someone from Hollywood who did what I think was much the same thing. When he felt his creative and thinking life was over, at 65, he chose to end things rather than fade away. We had yearly memorials at my old boys' high school for someone who was 18 and died 'cleaning his favorite gun'. At the time I was only about 13, and I couldn't understand how anyone could be so foolish as to try cleaning a weapon so familiar to them with a round in the chamber. Oh, to be so innocent again. Or perhaps not.
charlie hebdo An interesting and possibly troubled figure.
David Niven, in Bring on the Empty Horses, describes someone from Hollywood who did what I think was much the same thing. When he felt his creative and thinking life was over, at 65, he chose to end things rather than fade away.
We had yearly memorials at my old boys' high school for someone who was 18 and died 'cleaning his favorite gun'. At the time I was only about 13, and I couldn't understand how anyone could be so foolish as to try cleaning a weapon so familiar to them with a round in the chamber. Oh, to be so innocent again. Or perhaps not.
David Niven was probably talking about George Sanders, who famously left a suicide note that said "I am leaving because I am bored."
Turns out that wasn't the real reason. Sanders had suffered a series of strokes that while not appearing to have had any outward effects left him unable to persue his favorite hobby, playing the piano (He was concert-quality good) and unable to remember his lines. Having to use cue cards humiliated him, even though everyone understood. In frustration he even dragged his piano out of the house and chopped it up with an ax.
Depressed and in despair he took his own life. What shame.
And as far as "Killed while cleaning his gun..." is concerned a police detective explained to me years ago.
"Well, if the decedent was a Catholic being a suicide he'd be denied the Last Rites of the Church, plus a Catholic burial service, and burial in a Catholic cemetery, suicide being a mortal sin as far as the Church is concerned."
"And, life insurance companies don't pay out in the case of suicides. So, for the benefit of the families we class the death as "Killed while cleaning..."
"Yeah, we're lying about it, but sometimes you just have to, you know?"
Overmod At the time I was only about 13, and I couldn't understand how anyone could be so foolish as to try cleaning a weapon so familiar to them with a round in the chamber.
To be perfectly honest with you, I'd never thought of that angle. Kind of a euphemism.
charlie hebdoAn interesting and possibly troubled figure.
Paul MilenkovicSpeaking of WW-II France, anyone ever see this movie https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Train_(1964_film)
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Train_(1964_film)
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NFVU0A_55B4
Since this thread has reactivated, I have this one question.
Robin Olds in his autobiography "Fighter Pilot" writes about strafing trains in Occupied France, and how by Olds' reasoning, the locomotive crews in Occupied France were just doing the bidding of their occupiers. He claims that he "aimed for the boiler and not the cab" so as to not, at least immediately, kill the French engine crews.
What happens when you shoot into a live boiler? Do you risk a boiler explosion and hence serious harm to the crew? Or does the resulting bullet hole leak steam without the boiler tearing itself apart?
Speaking of WW-II France, anyone ever see this movie
I came across it flipping channels, and I came across the scene where Burt Lancaster is recasting the white-metal driver bearings that had been sabotaged by the locomotive driver, who had placed a coin in the lubricator line. It's a complicated plot why Lancaster is working to cross-purposes with the Resistance at that point, it appears it may have some interesting steam locomotive scenes?
If GM "killed the electric car", what am I doing standing next to an EV-1, a half a block from the WSOR tracks?
Flak train versus planes at Ploesti Rommania.
"The approach of the groups led by Kane and Johnson, parallel to the railway linking Floreşti and Ploieşti, had the unfortunate distinction of encountering Gerstenberg’s disguised Flak train. At an altitude of only about 50 ft (15 m), the bombers of the 98th and 44th BG(H)s found themselves to the left and right of this train’s direction of movement. The advantage lay with the 98th and 44th BG(H)s, whose gunners responded rapidly to the threat, disabling the locomotive and killing many of the Flak gun crews."
http://www.airforcemag.com/MagazineArchive/Pages/2007/December%202007/1207wave.aspx
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