Yaba daba doo! NOPE! Don't remember him or anyone like him. I was there 10 years after "Barney's" alleged name change, wasn't there long, and don't remember that whole episode fondly. The seeds of Eastern's eventual (1987) demise were sown, sprouted, and growing like weeds by 1974: a toxic culture full of "screw you" attitudes and pervasive sabotage of any attempts at cooperation or teamwork.
Greatest aviation myth this site “de-bunked”.
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- Start date
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FLYBOYJ
"THE GREAT GAZOO"
He was there at the end of the show - DOM. Got lured there after a career in the USAF and jumped on the sinking ship. I met a few folks at Eastern who always had good things to say about him, one of the 'good guys.' Bailed after the bow went into the water. "Barney" wound up being one of the program managers at the USAFA when I worked there.
Where was he when they needed him? Eastern was already in cancer mode when I was there in 1974. Anyway, our little group of four techs at JFK answered to Flight Training down at MIA, not anybody in Aircraft Maintenance. And everybody at JFK, regardless of company chain of command, answered to Port Authority and the Mafia. (not in that order)
swampyankee
Chief Master Sergeant
- 4,031
- Jun 25, 2013
swampyankee
Chief Master Sergeant
- 4,031
- Jun 25, 2013
That second I can answer: the steel used had a high nil-ductility transition temperature, that is the temperature below which steel will undergo brittle failure. Since Liberty ships were welded, there was nothing to stop a crack propagating at close to the speed of sound in steel until the ship broke.
The first, I can only surmise, but it's probably that none of them saw enough money in it.
I spent most of my career testing steels. That was the major cause in the steels used, but there were others. The welding process Submerged Arc Welding was new at the time and if you dont do it right, also with suitable consumables and flux it causes problems, also joint and ship design contributed to causes, they had square port holes and access holes. At the start they didnt even have methods to test for brittle fracture, the Battelle DWTT was developed for it and the Charpy test was a little known test developed by a French academic. The UK Welding Institute where I took all my exams grew out of the group that researched into problems with SAW welding on Liberty ships.
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MiTasol
1st Lieutenant
The first was that the USAAC did not foresee the need for any liquid cooled engine plus the USN and airlines were anti-liquid engines so no one would fund them. This stayed a problem until late in the war. Allison could have gone integral two speed and/or two stage early on but nobody in the USAAC/F wanted them. By the time the USAAF decided to wake up the end was in sight.
Geoffrey Sinclair
Staff Sergeant
- 937
- Sep 30, 2021
This is taken from the book Liberty by Peter Elphick, the chapter entitled "close to calamity" which deals with the emergence of structural failures in US built WWII merchant ships and the investigations undertaken to solve the problem.
As of 1 September 1944 some 558 ships had reported a total of 785 incidents of cracking, and this is known to be an underestimate of the total. The US "Final Report", containing data to 1 April 1946 noted of some 5,000 Maritime Commission built ships some 972 had reported a total of 1,442 incidents. Top of the list were a tanker and two non liberty ships which had suffered 8 incidents, the "top" two liberty ships had suffered 6 incidents.
One of the first incidents was when building the ship Ocean Justice, a welder was amazed to watch cracks propagating, on a cold morning in February 1942, the damage was classified as serious and the ship was not launched for another two months. Of the 60 Ocean class some 9 would suffer some sort of failure. The next major incident reported was on 10 November 1942 and the third on the 11th. By 12 January 1943 another 10 ships had reported major cracking problems. The US assigned the category class I to these, with class II being bad with the potential to become class I and class III for other reports. There were 18 class II and III incidents between November and January.
The Germans were well aware of the problem, even publishing an account in the journal Nauticus in 1944. The US allowed the New York Times to carry an article on the topic in April 1944. There is little doubt a problem in sorting out what was going on were the rumours, some of which were axis fuelled, as you would expect.
By the end of 1942 the cracking defects were clearly recognised as a problem and on 16 January 1943 the new tanker Schenectady nearly broke in half while being fitted out on the Columbia River. The break sounded like an explosion. Air temperature was 26 degrees Fahrenheit. The cracking had occurred so quickly the raised sections of the hull had almost no chance to ship water. (The ship broke into an inverted letter V as the bow and stern were carrying ballast). It was clear the crack did not follow the welds but went through the steel plates. The initial reaction was to blame the welds but that was not sustainable. The steel was taken for experiments and passed all the standard tests. The key observation was the steel had behaved as if it were brittle, with the pieces able to be reassembled into their original shape, whereas it should have been ductile, with some ability to "bend and stretch" before breaking and the distortions before breaking would mean the pieces could not be reassembled so neatly.
Since a majority of the early incidents came from Kaiser yards it was easy to assume it was a problem for that builder alone but as the incidents continued from February 1943 onwards it was clear there was a more systematic problem. It was across all yards and all types of ships. The next 11 class I failures resulted in the loss of two ships at sea. Then the Esso Manhattan, a tanker, effectively split in two off New York on 29 March 1943, with its two escorting ASW blimps granted ringside seats to take lots of photographs. In this case the crack had started at a defective weld. The ship made harbour and was put back together.
The US started an official inquiry on 20 April 1943 with an "utmost urgency" brief, to find out what was going on. At about the same time the British initiated a similar investigation, both countries gave the investigations considerable authority and resources, and exchange visits were organised to keep each investigation up to date with the other. The US started by circulating to masters of US ships a survey form requesting reports on cracking problems, accepting the inevitable rumours that fuelled. The available data collected revealed by 30 April 1943 there had been 28 class I events and over 100 events in total. Later the British circulated a similar survey. These surveys were continued throughout the war but they inevitably missed some incidents. It seems the reporting system stayed in use until the late 1960's.
Looking at the official US final report, which was data collected to 17 March 1946, there had been 132 class I failures. Peak class I failure month had been January 1944, with 20, worst month for all types of failures was March 1944 with 138. It would appear it was not until November 1943 that a failure resulted in US lives being lost, and that was from a lifeboat going missing.
Some 8 US and 6 British ships were used as tests, taking ships out of commission as required. The British tests were more elaborate than the US ones, using still water trials of sister ships, one welded and one riveted, and ocean trials with a ship whose master was instructed to go through storms as much as was safely possible. Incidentally these full size trials run in the 1944 to 1947 period were published by the Admiralty and remain to the book publication day the most modern set of data on the stresses full size merchant ships encounter. Elphick hints that maybe it is time for another set of trials. It took the sea trials to finally convince the die hards that it was not a case of riveting being superior as a joining technique.
The first obstacle any investigation had to overcome was the fact ship building rules were not codified, they were a collection of rules of thumb developed over the years. So no one knew what sort of stresses a "normal", that is riveted, merchant ship would see. This enabled those who preferred riveted construction to hold the view it was welding causing the problem, ideas like faulty welds or because riveting made the ship overall less rigid and so able to absorb stresses better. It took the full size trials to disprove the claimed superiority of riveting when it came to handling stress. In simple terms the difference between riveting and welding was minor. The crack resistance superiority came from the fact the welds created one metal sheet, riveting kept the sheets separate. As another example of the time needed it took about a year, that is until sometime in 1944, before any researcher reproduced the cracking in a laboratory experiment.
One of the actions first approved was the fitting of crack arresters, 4 long slots were cut in the ship's plating and covered by a strap that was riveted into place, it was easy to do this for new ships but expensive for ships already built, about 1,000 already built Liberty ships received the modifications. Apart from structural failures the crack arresters helped limit damage from bomb etc. hits. Ships meant as troop transports were given additional strengthening.
The first sets of data showed as expected cracks started from parts of the ship under high stress and strengthening was ordered for key areas. Welding remained a favourite candidate for the ultimate cause and more care was taken to ensure welding was to proper standards and the crack down did uncover problems, where welds were simply done incorrectly. A practice of poor welding was wide spread enough to have its own word, slugging, to describe the technique. Yet tests on slugged welds showed if anything they were superior to the "correct" welds, as opposed to other cases where the weld was simply faulty. Another clue was British built welded ships were not suffering the same defect rate.
It was also clear from the incident reports the cracks did not normally follow the welds, indeed they often seemed to quickly move away from them. Extensive US tests showed welds did not create "locked up" or residual tensions which then created failure points. The way the plates were cracking suggested the steel was the problem and like welding more effort was put in to ensure quality control was improved. As expected some quality problems were found in the steel supply but again standard testing on cracked plates kept coming up with pass marks. The Bethlehem Fairfield yard used part riveting in its ships and they suffered a much lower rate of cracking, which was another point in favour of the riveting was better belief. There was also the suspicion Bethlehem was managing to make sure its best steel went to its own ship yard.
The original April 1943 survey was also clearly pointing out low temperatures were a problem. As an aside whoever produced the survey questions managed to do a very good job, covering almost all the information needed to solve the problem. As the incident numbers built it became clear that ships built in lower temperature environments were more at risk. It also seemed to be ships in ballast were at more risk, and ballasting instructions were changed. Another complicating factor was ships in US service had a higher risk of seeing structural problems, ships in UK or Norwegian service a lower risk, but in Soviet service the risk was higher than for the US. While the Soviets were operating in lower temperature environments Elphick points to the average US merchant marine officer had much less sea experience than the British and Norwegians and this may have lead to the US ships being subjected to greater storm stresses as seamanship is more experience than theory.
In the end the metallurgists came up with the answer. The Cambridge (UK) team was lead by Dr Constance Tipper. The term notch brittleness is used to describe a plate having a higher stress area, a notch, and when it would break in a brittle manner at low temperatures. No tests were done for this at the time and it turned out US steels with their lower manganese to carbon ratios showed the problem more than UK steels. In almost all cases it required temperatures so low that they were rarely encountered however some of the US steel batches were so sensitive they could crack in tropical waters. It explained why welding was not a problem, why UK welded ships were not giving the same amount of problems, why it was worst in winter and why temperatures when under construction seemed to matter.
It would appear, despite the problems, the US wartime built ships lasted in service in bulk until the 1960's when their age and the superiority of the new diesel driven ships meant the wartime ships were uneconomic. In one sense they had to last, as of 1945 the US merchant fleet was bigger than the rest of the world combined.
As of 1 September 1944 some 558 ships had reported a total of 785 incidents of cracking, and this is known to be an underestimate of the total. The US "Final Report", containing data to 1 April 1946 noted of some 5,000 Maritime Commission built ships some 972 had reported a total of 1,442 incidents. Top of the list were a tanker and two non liberty ships which had suffered 8 incidents, the "top" two liberty ships had suffered 6 incidents.
One of the first incidents was when building the ship Ocean Justice, a welder was amazed to watch cracks propagating, on a cold morning in February 1942, the damage was classified as serious and the ship was not launched for another two months. Of the 60 Ocean class some 9 would suffer some sort of failure. The next major incident reported was on 10 November 1942 and the third on the 11th. By 12 January 1943 another 10 ships had reported major cracking problems. The US assigned the category class I to these, with class II being bad with the potential to become class I and class III for other reports. There were 18 class II and III incidents between November and January.
The Germans were well aware of the problem, even publishing an account in the journal Nauticus in 1944. The US allowed the New York Times to carry an article on the topic in April 1944. There is little doubt a problem in sorting out what was going on were the rumours, some of which were axis fuelled, as you would expect.
By the end of 1942 the cracking defects were clearly recognised as a problem and on 16 January 1943 the new tanker Schenectady nearly broke in half while being fitted out on the Columbia River. The break sounded like an explosion. Air temperature was 26 degrees Fahrenheit. The cracking had occurred so quickly the raised sections of the hull had almost no chance to ship water. (The ship broke into an inverted letter V as the bow and stern were carrying ballast). It was clear the crack did not follow the welds but went through the steel plates. The initial reaction was to blame the welds but that was not sustainable. The steel was taken for experiments and passed all the standard tests. The key observation was the steel had behaved as if it were brittle, with the pieces able to be reassembled into their original shape, whereas it should have been ductile, with some ability to "bend and stretch" before breaking and the distortions before breaking would mean the pieces could not be reassembled so neatly.
Since a majority of the early incidents came from Kaiser yards it was easy to assume it was a problem for that builder alone but as the incidents continued from February 1943 onwards it was clear there was a more systematic problem. It was across all yards and all types of ships. The next 11 class I failures resulted in the loss of two ships at sea. Then the Esso Manhattan, a tanker, effectively split in two off New York on 29 March 1943, with its two escorting ASW blimps granted ringside seats to take lots of photographs. In this case the crack had started at a defective weld. The ship made harbour and was put back together.
The US started an official inquiry on 20 April 1943 with an "utmost urgency" brief, to find out what was going on. At about the same time the British initiated a similar investigation, both countries gave the investigations considerable authority and resources, and exchange visits were organised to keep each investigation up to date with the other. The US started by circulating to masters of US ships a survey form requesting reports on cracking problems, accepting the inevitable rumours that fuelled. The available data collected revealed by 30 April 1943 there had been 28 class I events and over 100 events in total. Later the British circulated a similar survey. These surveys were continued throughout the war but they inevitably missed some incidents. It seems the reporting system stayed in use until the late 1960's.
Looking at the official US final report, which was data collected to 17 March 1946, there had been 132 class I failures. Peak class I failure month had been January 1944, with 20, worst month for all types of failures was March 1944 with 138. It would appear it was not until November 1943 that a failure resulted in US lives being lost, and that was from a lifeboat going missing.
Some 8 US and 6 British ships were used as tests, taking ships out of commission as required. The British tests were more elaborate than the US ones, using still water trials of sister ships, one welded and one riveted, and ocean trials with a ship whose master was instructed to go through storms as much as was safely possible. Incidentally these full size trials run in the 1944 to 1947 period were published by the Admiralty and remain to the book publication day the most modern set of data on the stresses full size merchant ships encounter. Elphick hints that maybe it is time for another set of trials. It took the sea trials to finally convince the die hards that it was not a case of riveting being superior as a joining technique.
The first obstacle any investigation had to overcome was the fact ship building rules were not codified, they were a collection of rules of thumb developed over the years. So no one knew what sort of stresses a "normal", that is riveted, merchant ship would see. This enabled those who preferred riveted construction to hold the view it was welding causing the problem, ideas like faulty welds or because riveting made the ship overall less rigid and so able to absorb stresses better. It took the full size trials to disprove the claimed superiority of riveting when it came to handling stress. In simple terms the difference between riveting and welding was minor. The crack resistance superiority came from the fact the welds created one metal sheet, riveting kept the sheets separate. As another example of the time needed it took about a year, that is until sometime in 1944, before any researcher reproduced the cracking in a laboratory experiment.
One of the actions first approved was the fitting of crack arresters, 4 long slots were cut in the ship's plating and covered by a strap that was riveted into place, it was easy to do this for new ships but expensive for ships already built, about 1,000 already built Liberty ships received the modifications. Apart from structural failures the crack arresters helped limit damage from bomb etc. hits. Ships meant as troop transports were given additional strengthening.
The first sets of data showed as expected cracks started from parts of the ship under high stress and strengthening was ordered for key areas. Welding remained a favourite candidate for the ultimate cause and more care was taken to ensure welding was to proper standards and the crack down did uncover problems, where welds were simply done incorrectly. A practice of poor welding was wide spread enough to have its own word, slugging, to describe the technique. Yet tests on slugged welds showed if anything they were superior to the "correct" welds, as opposed to other cases where the weld was simply faulty. Another clue was British built welded ships were not suffering the same defect rate.
It was also clear from the incident reports the cracks did not normally follow the welds, indeed they often seemed to quickly move away from them. Extensive US tests showed welds did not create "locked up" or residual tensions which then created failure points. The way the plates were cracking suggested the steel was the problem and like welding more effort was put in to ensure quality control was improved. As expected some quality problems were found in the steel supply but again standard testing on cracked plates kept coming up with pass marks. The Bethlehem Fairfield yard used part riveting in its ships and they suffered a much lower rate of cracking, which was another point in favour of the riveting was better belief. There was also the suspicion Bethlehem was managing to make sure its best steel went to its own ship yard.
The original April 1943 survey was also clearly pointing out low temperatures were a problem. As an aside whoever produced the survey questions managed to do a very good job, covering almost all the information needed to solve the problem. As the incident numbers built it became clear that ships built in lower temperature environments were more at risk. It also seemed to be ships in ballast were at more risk, and ballasting instructions were changed. Another complicating factor was ships in US service had a higher risk of seeing structural problems, ships in UK or Norwegian service a lower risk, but in Soviet service the risk was higher than for the US. While the Soviets were operating in lower temperature environments Elphick points to the average US merchant marine officer had much less sea experience than the British and Norwegians and this may have lead to the US ships being subjected to greater storm stresses as seamanship is more experience than theory.
In the end the metallurgists came up with the answer. The Cambridge (UK) team was lead by Dr Constance Tipper. The term notch brittleness is used to describe a plate having a higher stress area, a notch, and when it would break in a brittle manner at low temperatures. No tests were done for this at the time and it turned out US steels with their lower manganese to carbon ratios showed the problem more than UK steels. In almost all cases it required temperatures so low that they were rarely encountered however some of the US steel batches were so sensitive they could crack in tropical waters. It explained why welding was not a problem, why UK welded ships were not giving the same amount of problems, why it was worst in winter and why temperatures when under construction seemed to matter.
It would appear, despite the problems, the US wartime built ships lasted in service in bulk until the 1960's when their age and the superiority of the new diesel driven ships meant the wartime ships were uneconomic. In one sense they had to last, as of 1945 the US merchant fleet was bigger than the rest of the world combined.
Reluctant Poster
Tech Sergeant
- 1,696
- Dec 6, 2006
This seems to have been posted in the wrong thread, so I am not sure what you were replying to.
The myth that the USN was anti liquid-cooled seems to be based on some flippant remark that some Admiral (Power?) supposedly made about liquid-cooled aircraft and air-cooled submarines.
The reality is that the USN was funding the development of Pratt & Whitney's liquid cooled engines right up to the start of American involvement in WWII. The following are from "Development of Aircraft Engines" by Schailfer
The navy was also supporting the Lycoming H-2470.
The Toledo factory was later repurposed to produce components for the V-1650
Reluctant Poster
Tech Sergeant
- 1,696
- Dec 6, 2006
The Japanese had much difficulty with the welded Mogami class. The lead ship of the follow up class, Tone, was too far advanced so it was built with mixed riveted and welded construction, while its later sister ship, Chikuma, was all riveted.
Some Liberty-class vessels were employed in the Far Eastern Shipping Co. (USSR) until the end of the 1970s. One of them served as a training ship even longer. I saw her in Vladivostok in 1989 - mothballed but still used for fire-fighting and other training.
Type 42 Destroyer, anyone? "Let's make it shorter and then it'll be cheaper..."
Was it? A 10 year debate here throws up a recent suggestion that it might not have been (see the Aug 2022 post onwards)
Type 42 Batch 1 Hull Cut
I am trying to get to the truth behind the story about the Type 42 ending up with a hull shorter than the designers wanted. The sources that I have available are contradictory. Norman Friedman states that there is no indication that the Type 42 was shortened from the a preferred 434ft (the...
www.secretprojects.co.uk
I can be forgiven for my slip since I haven't been on that forum for months. A ten-year debate yet you've highlighted to read from August 2022? Have I been away from the forums that long?
Well, maybe it isn't Caiden's fault.It's a shame that Ausairpower used Caidin as a reference, including this threadworn nugget:
"It is not surprising that German pilots nicknamed the P-38 Der Gabelschwanz Teufel (the Fork-Tailed Devil)."
While searching through old Popular Science magazines for tube radio schematics I read the September 1943 issue. An article starting on page 96 has the title: "The German Pilots Renamed It The Gabelschwanz Teufel"
GrauGeist
Generalfeldmarschall zur Luftschiff Abteilung
It appeared in the August (1943) edition of Life magazine, too.
And keep in mind that Caidin started his writing career at the age of16, as an associate editor with Air News and Air Tech magazines, which was in 1943.
Greg Boeser
2nd Lieutenant
Story I read said a German infantyman captured in Tunisia coined the phrase.
It would be cheaper to make it longer cause then you can stretch the budget.Was it? A 10 year debate here throws up a recent suggestion that it might not have been (see the Aug 2022 post onwards)
Type 42 Batch 1 Hull Cut
I am trying to get to the truth behind the story about the Type 42 ending up with a hull shorter than the designers wanted. The sources that I have available are contradictory. Norman Friedman states that there is no indication that the Type 42 was shortened from the a preferred 434ft (the...
Glider
Captain
My understanding was that the shortened hull was first and foremost a cost saving measure, forced onto the designers. The follow on from that meant that the first vessels had poor sea handling which in turn added extra pressure onto the hull and ultimately cracking of the hull.
It also limited the ability to improve the vessel with updates as she was 'full' for want of a better phrase.
So when the third version was authorised with the changes agreed, who can blame the designers for having a 'Told you so' feeling
It also limited the ability to improve the vessel with updates as she was 'full' for want of a better phrase.
So when the third version was authorised with the changes agreed, who can blame the designers for having a 'Told you so' feeling
You might be interested in this discussion over on the Secret Projects Forum about Type 42 development that ran between 2012 and last year.
Type 42 Batch 1 Hull Cut
I am trying to get to the truth behind the story about the Type 42 ending up with a hull shorter than the designers wanted. The sources that I have available are contradictory. Norman Friedman states that there is no indication that the Type 42 was shortened from the a preferred 434ft (the...
www.secretprojects.co.uk
Note the final para in post #28
"All in all its looking like story of the Type 42 being trimmed from 434ft is a myth. The Type 17 and its AAW variant and none of the early T42s during 1966 were ever that long and in fact grew from 385ft to 392ft. Had the final design kept the more compact superstructure layout with the armament 15ft further aft, I wonder if there would still have been a push to lengthen to 434ft in the Batch 3s?"
