Thanks. The Japanse today are different, though.
As I recall it (1970), warships (except submarines) had no watertight doors of any types (hinged, sliding, bolted covers) in any transverse hull bulkheads. To move from one watertight compartment to another you had to climb up to the main deck into the superstructure, deckhouse, etc, and from there down below again. There were no internal stairways anywhere. Sloping ladders were the rule.
External doors/hatches from superstructures/deckhouses were not only weathertight but also gas tight to pass poisonous or radioactive areas.
Internal openings in the maindeck between hull and superstucture/deckhouse were sometimes fitted with hatches to isolate the top from the bottom. When these hatches were closed, any person escaping from below had to open the hatch from below ⌠one way or other. But only when ordered to do so.
Those images define the collision impact angle, only one of which can connect the bow & bulbous bow to the two respective areas of damage indicated. An angle of 20-30 degrees appears consistent with the photos. I think you have to make the impact rather glancing & oblique to fit the port side of the bulbous bow â plausibly at the line of apparent removal of marine growth as observed above â forward of the main above-water impact point, against the rearward edge of the underwater hole:
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[quote=âTupsis, post:614, topic:45129, full:trueâ]âŚperhaps indicating more serious global deformations in the hull - or there was a minor error in reporting and spaces within the same watertight compartmentâŚ
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Some articles of the USNI or other Near-Navy sites mention that the Fitzgerald has not only a hole below the waterline, but she is also âtwistedâ or âwarpedâ. I do not know if they are writing about millimeters or centimeters; meters would probably be visible on the pictures.
However, to twist a destroyer would ask for terrible forces. A grazing contact with a nearly parallel course could not be the origin; the angle of impact must be much higher.
During the first seconds, the momentum of the containership against the blocked destroyer (blocked by the opposite mass of water), transforms, seen from the destroyer, into a lateral force component and an advancing force component. Only a high angle of impact would result in a high lateral component.
What is happening to the frames and thus, to the watertight compatments, when the hull is twisted�
+1 For twisted.
I was once on a reefer and we were swamped by a 40 - 50 for wave in the deep S Atlantic. speed went from 18 knots to zero.
Creased the main deck with two distinct kinks of 3 - 4 inches.
Temporary repairs included welding railway lines as longitudinals on deck, not pretty but it worked.
If you look closely at the hi-res image, you can see the inflection in the side plating leading up and aftâhttps://news.usni.org/wp-content/uploads/2017/07/170711-N-WC492-027.jpg
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I was looking at that last night and put these images together, and marked the area of the breach but I think the looks are deceiving a bit because they do not show the temporary repairs at the bottom of the destroyer.
With the release of the dry dock pictures several other questions emerged in my mind⌠Relative to your pretty good assessment in post #577, I noticed the horizontal distance offset between above and under waterline contact points (I marked in the following image). Prior to seeing the new pictures I was expecting those contact points to line up vertically. My guess is that the delta is at least 2+ meters.
This mismatch between (above/under waterline) contact points makes me believe that the first contact took place above the waterline, and that impact made Fitz lean/roll about 15-20 degrees to port, at which point the bulbous bow made itâs way into the hull. My estimate is about 3.5 meters (11+ ft) of the bulbous bow penetrated and possibly lodged into the hull. This also explains the admiralâs statement in the first press conference that the bulbous bow penetration almost reached Fitzâs keel. I think it is evident in this picture that the steel plate welded/bolted to the bottom of the hull (without braces) is extending towards the keel (as a part of the temporary repairs).
All that said, it is possible that the bulbous bow may in fact saved the destroyer by carrying the vessel as opposed to chopping it up because the leading edge of the ACXâs bow never got a chance to split the ship open. In other words, structural integrity of the hull above the waterline on the stbd side of Fitz was preserved (as you drew it on your diagram) with the gap between Fitz and the leading edge of ACxâs bow between the contact points. My guess is that the bulbous bow was lodged into Fitz for some part of the 90 degree hard starboard turn ACX made, possibly with pretty violent dragging assistance from the Fitz (depending on the speed of Fitz at that point).
Here is the picture of ACX I used for my estimate for the size of the bulb transposing the distances from the draught line (each segment is 1 meter). The bulb looks to me about 4 meters long and itâs radius is around 4 meters as well.
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after/before.
Source for some pictures used: link
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Thanks for the images. It helps visualize how three spaces were flooded without severely overthinking the issue.
It would appear that Fitz damages are (red) high above the waterline (caused by the Crystal bow flare) and (green - the patch) below waterline (caused by the Crystal bulbous bow. Unless a transverse bulkhead was damaged only one compartment could be up-flooded.
It seems the underwater compartment was forward of the engine rooms. If these were connected by watertight doors, and if these doors were open, three compartments could have been up-flooded.
It would be interesting to see a picture of the underwater damages prior the patch being fitted.
Whatever happened to the M.V. American Cormorant?
Why would those âwatertight doorsâ have been open when underway?
The Navy did not renew the American Cormorantâs charter around 2004. In 2005 she was renamed Asian Atlas and traded commercially until 2014. Scrapped as the Atlas in 2014. By then she was pretty long on the tooth having been built as a tanker in 1975 and converted to a heavy lift ship in 1982.
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Probably to facilitate the crew going to the toilet. Warship design is/was always quite simple. Two boiler rooms, two turbine rooms, guns on/below deck everywhere, where space was available with amo store rooms below, a wheel house with the old manâs suite just below. Then there is not much space left for crew accommodation and sanitary facilities, so they are squeezed in on the double bottom, etc.
I was stationed on a DDG, depending on the readiness level, the watertight doors throughout the ship were left open, even the doors leading to the weather decks were open, there were blackout barriers to prevent the escape of light, when the readiness levels changed, doors were then closed.
Were there watertight doors (hinged or sliding) on the main watertight bulkheads below the damage control/bulkhead/main deck? To my understanding, unlike civilian ships, naval ships donât generally have those, so moving from one compartment to another would require one to climb âoverâ the bulkheads.
Of course you donât have to answer if you consider it to be such information that shouldnât be posted online.
Thanks.
She was not much of a commercial success after coming off charter in Deigo Garcia. She spent most of her time sitting idle at OPL West Anchorage in Malaysian waters.
The last of my own pictures of her I can find is from Dec. 2013:
The one and only time I saw that thing was anchored in Mogadishu in 93.
Such a fertile, if entirely inaccurate, imagination.
Quite correct. But there is NO horizontal access between watertight sections of the ship below the damage control deck. Just as the Main Deck is the uppermost complete fore&aft and athwartships deck, the Damage Control Deck is the lowermost complete fore & aft and athwartships deck. All access to spaces below the DC deck are through watertight hatches and/or scuttles. As noted by Chiefluis, these are not closed in a normal steaming condition, but are closed within a very short period during emergency evolutions. They would have been closed quickly if sufficient warning from a collision alarm.
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Rather accurate observation, but for the good of everyone, please refrain from feeding the trollâŚ
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Which comes back to a question several people have raised earlier in the discussion. If the captain was in fact still in his rack at the moment of collision, as were so many sailors in the berthing quarters, was a collision alarm ever sounded?
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