Chicken lights
Forum Pony Express Driver
Hard to give the vise scale. Roughly a small microwave for size
Toured a WW2 battleship today in the USA
Battleship North Carolina in Wilmington NCWhat ship and where?
I spent almost three hours crawling around it and it was tiring. I think I saw everything but honestly I’d go again it was that neatCool. Didn't see anything like that on the USS Midway, but then again I don't think we saw the whole thing and we spent a good 3 hours exploring.
Cool. Didn't see anything like that on the USS Midway, but then again I don't think we saw the whole thing and we spent a good 3 hours exploring.
Midway has pretty cool machine shop(s). I have similar pics in my album where everything is painted & some stand up manikin sailor machinists. Its amazing what they must have made/repaired on board.
https://www.midwaysailor.com/clintgriffin/machineshop.html
Just noticed how on the top of the machine room runs a curved I-beam. I've seen similar ones on submarines. If I am not mistaken it's a dolly trolly (rail) used to transport heavy parts to the machine room. Cool enough in the foresight that needs to go into the design and routing of the cables, pipes, etc. But the bending force to curve an I-beam must be amazing. I saw one bent once when I was a kid, long before CNC was a thing. Now it looks like child's play, but imagine the thought that went into this when the ship you toured was built. Few appreciate the design guys who have to imagine this stuff in their heads long before the sexy stuff of engines and guns get installed.
Sounds like a good bookI have a book somewhere in my library that is dedicated to the preparations the "Mericans" went thru to prepare for a war footing. It is mindboggling the minute detail they went thru and the absolute inane stuff that I wouldn't even begin to think about until the "shtf". Some of the smallest detail stuff was in the works 2 or 3 years before Dec.7th. and after that date there was nothing that took precedence over war production & design. Two of the most memorable topics tell of an aircraft factory in California that was completely covered over with a camouflage tent that had a urban residential sub-division printed on it ( I think it covered over 200 acres). The second was that Henry Ford had a truck assembly line taken over by the war dept. to build transport trucks. It seems ol'e Henry thought he was going to tell the military how to build their trucks (he was a very belligerent fellow I guess) and Franklin D sent a couple of secret service to remove Henry and escort him home & to make sure he stayed there ( supposedly he refused to get out of his chair so they carried him & chair out)...and he did for the rest of the war under a sort of house arrest.
Besides the fact that modern war machines are astronomical priced...ever wonder why the "defense budget" down south is out of this world by our meager Canadian standard... and this speaks to their "forethought to preparedness", The entire U.S interstate highway system is built and maintained by the U.S, army engineers...so they have the immediate capability to use that system for whatever reason suits them best in time of emergency need. The Army doesn't need any "prior" permission from anybody but the president (C.I.C.) ...need a runway or tank road anywhere in the US and its there.When analytical minds turn to inventing and building machines, the results are amazing. I certainly respect people who learn by experience over "winging it," but people who think up solutions for problems that have yet to present themselves or have to be anticipated, are on a whole other level.
My understanding is that MIG welding was invented to solve the production time issues ahead of time on the Polaris submarine project at a time when the "Mericans" were in a rush to rule the ocean's depths. As horrible as war and arms races are, they accelerate technology and force people to think ahead of the problem they are trying to solve. Ford was a fascinating man, you're right.