How Do You Circumcise a Battleship?

[Music] hi i'm ryan semanski curator for battleship new jersey museum and memorial today we're in one of the gunnery store rooms down on third deck if you're looking at your booklet general plans this is uh 3 204 0. so it's just a storage space this one has a the largest hatch on the ship it's basically right aft of the flight deck there's a big hatch there that lowers stuff down here and so the gunnery department stored some of their big heavy stuff in here we're in the middle of restoring this space and we found this guy right here this is a pretty cool tool [Music] and i'm couldn't tell you what the actual name for it is some sort of vertical lathe or something like that but the crew referred to it as the circumciser so this notice this drum here 16 inches in diameter this is for your 16 inch gun now if you watch this older video we did link down below where we talked about how the 16-inch gun is a built-up design it's several different tubes and liners and sleeves all slotted together the innermost sleeve is the one that has the rifling on it it's a relatively thin sleeve and the idea is that when you've worn out the rifling as designed you could shoot about 300 shots through it before the rifling wears out then you could pull that sleeve out put another one in without having to make a whole new gun barrel gun barrels are extremely long lead items so when a ship is authorized they tend to make the gun barrels like right off the bat before they do anything else which is why the iowa class battleships have so many gun barrels laying around because they kept making the barrels for illinois kentucky and some of the montana-class battleships and then when those ships weren't completed then all those gun barrels were just sitting in the inventory so every 300 shots you've got to replace the entire liner which means removing the entire gun barrel from the ship but every couple dozen shots the force of a 16-inch shell pushing its way through that liner and remember each shell has a brass base ring at the bottom that is designed to be worn uh it expands to grip that liner and basically has the ridges of the rifling cut into it to get cut into it as it's being pushed through it and that's what causes the shell to grip the liner and spin well while that's happening all that pressure is starting to gradually flatten out that liner which means it pops out the front of the muzzle why is this a problem because as that thin metal that makes up the liner starts to come out of the front of the gun it is now no longer supported by the tube which means as this projectile is coming through it could cause a crack in that liner in the unsupported area and then that crack will just run down the liner through the supported area and there goes the accuracy of your guns accuracy is vitally important when you've got this analog computer and you're firing things over the horizon a crack liner you just can't hit the side of a barn so what did they do in this circumstance turrets 1 and 3 can depress to negative 2 degrees elevation turret 2 can depress to 0 degrees elevation you depress these all the way you insert this thing into the muzzle of the gun and then you can basically trim off the excess skin from the liner that's starting to poke through the end of the muzzle like i said the crew called it the circumciser in fact during the vietnam war when they had to trim it they had the chaplains supervise it the chaplain wasn't necessarily a rabbi but because you've only got one or two chaplains administering the religious rights to the entire crew tends to be even catholic or protestants or whatever denomination will supervise any sort of religious ceremonies like a circumcision so the iowas did have their gun barrels all swapped out in the 1950s this is following the uh both world war ii and korea they were getting close to 300 shots per barrel and they decided you know what if we get into another shooting war we don't want to have to stop take the ship out of service swap out the barrels so you know we're 240 250 shots per barrel already let's just swap them out now but then by vietnam in the 1980s they had additives that they added that prevented the rifling from being worn away so it functionally increased the line of the it functionally increased the lining of the barrel to the entire lifespan of the ship however in 1984 they had to replace the center barrel of turret 2. they had to do it for exactly the reason i described the lining of the barrel got cracked center barrel turret two was the one they always fired first during sure bombardment missions maybe because it's in the center it's the central most one of the ships so it's the firing solution is most accurate for that one maybe it was just captain snyder's preference but during the vietnam war turret 2 center barrel got way more use than any of the others and so in the 1980s either in some of the gunnery training they did prior to their big deployment or during the long deployment off beirut they found that that barrel had a crack in it and was completely inaccurate so they stopped using it they used the other eight barrels but they stopped using that one until they were able to get back to long beach in 84 and then they pulled out that barrel and put in a whole new one that barrel got cut up for scrap but all of the ship's other barrels as they got changed out were staved in the inventory the navy still has some of these 16-inch barrels in the inventory although they're gradually getting them out and either scrapping them or working with museums to get them on display check out this video in the description below to see where battleship new jersey's nine world war ii era gun barrels ended up one of my favorite movies of all time is under siege one of my favorite lines from under siege when uh chief casey ryback played by steven seagal uh who turns out is a very problematic putin supporting individual but did a good job with this movie um he is talking to one of his friends on the ship after tommy lee jones has taken over hope that didn't spoil too much and the guy says man i don't know what i'm doing i did laundry during the gulf war we forget that life on the ship is not constant fighting there's a lot of other stuff going on when you join the navy you might be doing sewing or working in the galley or the ship's laundry or doing any of these mundane tasks let us know in the comment section down below what you think the weirdest job that people in the military end up doing is circumcising a 16-inch gun is certainly up there on my list battleship new jersey receives operating support from the new jersey department of state also from a number of other businesses and private individuals we really appreciate your support there's a link in the description below if you'd like to donate to keep helping us restore spaces like this gunnery storeroom it allows us to find missing parts of the ship that we didn't even know we had you can also support us by liking sharing and subscribing so more people find out about our channel and our museum thanks for watching

Channel: Battleship New Jersey

Views: 103,017

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Id: 9R94bNhuN-A

Length: 9min 4sec (544 seconds)

Published: Fri Mar 18 2022