grade eight?

[scirocco16vr32 at gmail.com (Chris Bennett)]

Back in the good 'ole days when I was in the navy... Ah I remember it
like it was last year...

;)  Sorry I had to say it.

I guess that was a good thing about being on a carrier and a tender.
If we "broke" we just sat there for a while.  The bright side as you
said was that loss changed how we did business in general.  From what
I understand there have been several close calls from that same time
period.  We lost a hundred men but that brought the changes that saved
so many more.

On 3/26/07, Allyn <amalventano1@tds.net> wrote:
> > All this talk of fastener grades reminds me of the subsafe
> > program in the Navy.  The idea is that you want to keep the
> > water out of the people tank.
> >
> > I was always told it was an incorrect grade of fastener on
> > the Thresher that failed allowing a large volume of water
> > into the switchgear (killing power) but reading about it
> > onlines tells me that it was an incorrectly brazed joint on a
> > main seawater valve.  Same effect.
> >
> > I am sure that Al can correct me.  I was NOT a submariner.  I
> > would not be able to speak of such things intelligently
> > because I was a surface weenie (and consequently hete-- um
> > nevermind I won't say it.
> > LOL)
>
> It most likely started with the silver brazed joints, but ended with the then poor standard procedure of having a hair-trigger for
> isolating the steam system (from the reactor), which cut off propulsion.  On a submarine, propulsion speed has a BIG influence on
> the ability to 'drive' the ship shallow - even more than blowing the ballast tanks dry (which is risky when deep, as breaking the
> surface at an uncontrolled angle can result in the ballast tanks partially re-filling with water).  Imagine a cup, upside down,
> submerged in water, full of air.  For the equivalent visual, tilt the cup.
>
> While the Thresher was a sad loss for the Navy, it caused _significant_ improvements in safety across the entire submarine fleet.
> All joints are precision welded with matching material, tested, retested (radiography / ultrasonic).  Procedures were re-written
> sith significantly greater flexibility (if absolutely necessary, we can boil the steam plant dry in order to propel the ship to the
> surface and save the crew).  Safety systems were installed (there are now emergency stations that can remotely shut all major hull
> openings of that compartment within seconds).  Heck, some boats can literally pressurize an entire compartment, so as long as the
> (theoretically gaping) hole is low, the space will only fill to the level of that hole (though this only works at surface pressures,
> so getting there is rather important (back to the steam plant comment above)).
>
> Last comms from the Thresher:
> "... minor difficulties, have positive up-angle, attempting to blow."
> (5 minutes later)
> "exceeding test depth ... nine hundred north".
> (1 minute later, the tracking ships sonar detected the implosion)
>
> Al
>
>


-- 
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