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IRL, did a Japanese BB blow up and sink while anchored in Hong Kong Harbour? Spontaneous turret explosion is a pretty well documented phenom. The old British BB Rodney met a like fate, if memory serves. And of course the silly court martial of the "homosexual" crew member of the hmmm, which US Battleship was it that blew up what? 20+ years ago? Which jap BB blew up?
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Mutsu blew up, but not in Hong Kong (it was in the Home Islands). The Rodney didn't explode. There's been a few explosions on US battleships; the last one was a turret explosion (on the Iowa, I believe), something like 25 years ago.
< Message edited by Terminus -- 2/22/2007 10:58:31 PM >
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I think it was Mutsu. And no, that doesn't happen in WitP. Imagine the wailing and gnashing of teeth if that happened as a random event, or if a typhoon suddenly sank flotilla or two (actually happened as well)...
-F-
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quote:
ORIGINAL: Feinder
I think it was Mutsu. And no, that doesn't happen in WitP. Imagine the wailing and gnashing of teeth if that happened as a random event, or if a typhoon suddenly sank flotilla or two (actually happened as well)...
-F-
I know, I had a good chuckle when it occurred to me that you could put in something like a much slower sys damage that might make it possible as a random occurence....
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i always thought it would be nice if this game modeled hitting uncharted rocks and reefs. Probably much more of an occurence than turret explosions and typhoons. The beloved CL Boise may not have survived the war if it didn't hit that uncharted rock in the beginning of the war....which sent her home..probably saving the ship.
i always thought it would be nice if this game modeled hitting uncharted rocks and reefs. Probably much more of an occurence than turret explosions and typhoons. The beloved CL Boise may not have survived the war if it didn't hit that uncharted rock in the beginning of the war....which sent her home..probably saving the ship.
i once had a post that had some of the more spectacular accidents - the one where the AE blew up at Manus took out dozens of ships, iirc...
But the daily toll on ships was truly amazing when i started compiling it... it was almost every day when something bad would lay up or destroy a ship (crashing into each other and reefs/rocks seemed to be particularly popular as you pointed out) - and not just merchies, but CVs and BBs as well. i suggested that maybe a subroutine could be built into to cause collisions when you jammed 100+ ships into a small harbor...
Who knows, maybe it'll show up one day... If nothing else to see how loudly people would whine about it. "My battleship sank in a typhoon! The game's broken!"
< Message edited by Terminus -- 2/23/2007 1:23:17 AM >
Nothing happened to the Rodney, like I said. As for the Iowa (I'm pretty sure it was her), there was an explosion in a gun turret, which put it out of commission. She was about to be decommissioned herself, so they didn't bother repairing her.
At least as far as I can remember... Do your own Google search, you lazy bugger!
Mutsu was the only battleship to spontaneously explode during WWII. It happened more commonly before and during WWI. Even Mikasa had that experience. Perhaps the most interesting event of this sort involved the British monitor Glatton in 1918. Stokers, unaware that their compartment abutted the 6in magazines, piled clinker and ash against the bulkhead which ultimately led to a fire and explosion. At first the investigators thought the cork insulation in the bulkhead had caught fire; then they found out there was no cork insulation--instead someone had jammed old newspapers in there. Woops. An examination of Glatton's sistership found that she too had this newspaper insulation and that it had charred black.
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If I recall correctly, the Mutsu explosion was never fully explained. Late in the war, Japan was so desperate for fuel that they tapped the fuel tanks on the wreck.
The US battleship had a turret explosion during an exercise. The Navy claimed it was suicide/sabotage by a gay sailor on the turret crew that had been outed.
One of the most famous spontaneous ship explosions was the USS Maine, which started the Spanish American War. An investigation of the wreck about 10 years ago determined that it was almost certainly an accident.
The art of how to secure magazines properly was slow to evolve. By WWII, accidental explosions were rare.
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Very tenuously related I kmow but Massie's Castles of Steel cover WW1 Naval stuff BRILLIANTLY IMO....of course in this is the mag explosions of English BC's
Who knows, maybe it'll show up one day... If nothing else to see how loudly people would whine about it. "My battleship sank in a typhoon! The game's broken!"
It was only a Force 9 Typhoon, it should only happen in a Force 10!!
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I think you'll find that most of the WWI era explosions had to do with decomposition of the rather unstable cordite in use at the time. There was an article in Warship International in 2001, "Ammunition Explosions in World War I: A Re-examination of the Evidence" by DK Brown and Iain McCallum. It includes a table with 21 ships listed, including accidents back to 1905 and battle damage (like the Jutland ships). The revised G&D volume on US battleships gives a survey of turret accidents, including a good look at the Iowa accident. It may interest you to know that the Japanese tried to pin Mutsu's destruction on a disgruntled crewman. No conclusive explanation has been made, but my preferred theory is an accident stemming from illicit on-board brewing.
If I recall correctly, the Mutsu explosion was never fully explained. Late in the war, Japan was so desperate for fuel that they tapped the fuel tanks on the wreck.
The US battleship had a turret explosion during an exercise. The Navy claimed it was suicide/sabotage by a gay sailor on the turret crew that had been outed.
One of the most famous spontaneous ship explosions was the USS Maine, which started the Spanish American War. An investigation of the wreck about 10 years ago determined that it was almost certainly an accident.
The art of how to secure magazines properly was slow to evolve. By WWII, accidental explosions were rare.
Bill
The jury is still out on the Maine - the various inquiries about this have split on the verdict, and iirc, the latest verdict was that it probably was NOT an accident, contradicting the verdict of the Rickover investigation.
There was a series of posts on the forum a year or so ago about this (and i posted a bunch of photos)... i'll see if i can find this using the forum search function (but i am not sanguine about this working ...)
There are 4 major investigations - 3 say the ship was mined (or probably mined), and one (the Rickover report) says that coal bunker fires heated up the magazines causing them to explode (not coal dust explosion).
The latest was the 1999 National Geographic investigation:
quote:
"In 1999, to commemorate the centennial of the sinking of the Maine, National Geographic Magazine commissioned an analysis by Advanced Marine Enterprises, using computer modeling that was not available for previous investigations. The AME analysis examined both theories and concluded that “it appears more probable than was previously concluded that a mine caused the inward bent bottom structure and the detonation of the magazines.” Some experts, including some of Admiral Rickover’s team and several analysts at AME, do not agree with the conclusion, and the fury over new findings even spurred a heated 90-minute debate at the 124th annual meeting of the U.S. Naval Institute."
I'll have to re-read the NG, I thought it said the plates were blown outwards...
Nope - inwards. If you look at the thread i posted above, it shows a pic... Rickover theorized that the reflection of the blast wave off the bottom shoved the plates inwards after they had been blown outwards. From what i read, most (not all) engineers that have studied this find it a dubious proposition.
The US battleship had a turret explosion during an exercise. The Navy claimed it was suicide/sabotage by a gay sailor on the turret crew that had been outed.
i've read at least one book and several articles on this... the whole business was very curious. The sailor in question had recently made over his insurance policy to a crewman who was apparently the object of his affection, and was acting very strangely.
After the turret the crewman worked in blew up, the sailor's family alerted the Navy with their suspicions that the sailor had sabotaged the turret and caused the explosion.
The Navy was happy to latch onto this... they claimed that they had detected some foreign substances that should not have been there, and thought they were part of an explosive device. They also claimed that the loading proceedures could not have caused an explosion. So the Navy assigned the blame of the explosion on the sailor.
The family (maybe other family members?) THEN claimed the sailor couldn't have done it. After a long investigation, it was discovered that the loading procedures COULD have caused the explosion (esp. with the aged propellant bags)... the Navy then "exonerated" the sailor.
But notice: the Navy did not actually clear the sailor of explosion. it was decided that the explosion could have been caused by the propellant bag (and maybe or even probably it was) - but one can not say with certainty that the sailor didn't do it, and the final conclusion kind of glosses over the family's original suspicions and the sailor's behavior.
So, what was the cause? Probably it was from the rapid loading procedure combined with the aged propellant bags, but this is just a best guess...
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Pretty sure the only British dreadnougt lost to a non-combat related magazine explosion was HMS Vanguard at Scapa Flow during WWI. Italian Leonardo da Vinci met the same fate aroumd the same time too IIRC.
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Nice to see you back on the forum. I agree with the post somewhere above about Massie's "Castles of Steel" - fantastic book. Has anybody read his other books? What are they like?
IIRC, the German light cruiser Karlsruhe also suffered an internal explosion, most likely a magazine explosion in the Carrabean early on in the war and was wrecked.
To the tragedy of the Mutsu, one must add too that over a hundred cadets and 40 instructors of the IJN from Tsuchiura group were visiting the battleship at this very moment, something indeed very serious for the naval aviation in 1943...
< Message edited by Fishbed -- 2/23/2007 5:07:30 PM >
ORIGINAL: rtrapasso Rickover theorized that the reflection of the blast wave off the bottom shoved the plates inwards after they had been blown outwards. From what i read, most (not all) engineers that have studied this find it a dubious proposition.
Dubious? Even if we know that such reflection and shoving of the plates inward actually happened (and it is 100% sure) when french BB Liberté sunk?