BB spontaneous combustion

[Redan]

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?

[Terminus]

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.

[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-

[Redan]

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....

[Terminus]

That would certainly be... interesting. More realistic, too...

[KDonovan]

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.

[rtrapasso]

ORIGINAL: KDonovan

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... [:'(]

[Terminus]

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!"

[Speedysteve]

Would that be a bug or glitch T?[:'(]
 
Tell me what happened to Rodney and the Turret expo on Iowa 25 years ago. Not read much about them.

[Terminus]

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![:'(]

[Speedysteve]

Do it for me. I'm busy dumbass[:'(]

[Tiornu]

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.

[Speedysteve]

Hi Tiornu,
 
The explosions that occured from 1900 onwards mainly due to the same thing or not?

[wdolson]

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

[Speedysteve]

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[X(]

[JeffroK]

ORIGINAL: Terminus

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!"

[8D] It was only a Force 9 Typhoon, it should only happen in a Force 10!![8D]

[JeffroK]

Sounds like the USS Maine had many friends.

[Tiornu]

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.

[rtrapasso]

ORIGINAL: wdolson

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 ...)

[rtrapasso]

OK - here is the thread about that:

fb.asp?m=1167734

rehashing what was said:

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:

"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."