Port Holes!

[Music] hi i'm ryan simanski curator for battleship new jersey museum of memorial and today we're going to talk about windows more accurately portholes in previous videos we've done deep dives into things like the ship's water type doors the types of floor tiles that are used on the ship the colors of the walls and today we're just going to talk a little bit about the types of portholes on the ship iowa class battleships are interesting because they've got no portholes in the hall of the vessel and looking at most earlier battleships that's kind of uncommon if you look at any pictures of the famous battleships like arizona bismarck or hood you see that they have portholes usually at least on the forward and aft ends of the ship oftentimes the middle of the ship where the armored belt is does not have portals obviously you can't put a window in there so if they have armor there especially upper belts like hood has you're not going to see portals there but you'll still see them in the forward and aft ends of the hall which are relatively unarmored iowa class battleships do not have that which is where most of the enlisted birthing is forward and after the armored citadels on second and third decks so these guys just don't have portholes for light or ventilation in their birthing compartments iowa class battleships do have at least three different sizes of porthole in the superstructure we're up here on the o8 level with what i consider to be the medium sized porthole there are also some larger sized ones which tend to show up in officer staterooms on the 01 and o2 levels and there are some some like real small area more like viewports than portholes that show up in a couple of places around the ship even ships that were built with portholes in the us navy prior to world war ii tended to have them blanked over during the war the navy intentionally reduced the number of through-hall openings in their ships and i'm not sure if this is related to any combat experience in particular that they had i don't know of any occasions of a ship's porthole being shot through and leading to the loss of the ship or anything like that but you see a number of ships which were built with portholes in the hall in birthing compartments having them blanked over during the war in some instances these are even reinstalled post-war my beloved coast guard cutter kanye that i worked on before coming here to the battleship you can see that when the portholes were reinstalled they're offset something like six inches from where they had originally been so if you're looking at the outside of the ship you can see the blank where they had cut out the old porthole and just welded in a round piece and you can see where they then cut out another round place to weld in the post-war portholes and sure enough looking at pictures of the ship pre-war during the war post-war you can see [Music] portholes no portholes and portholes again navy ships tended to not get the portholes reinstalled most pre-war navy ships just weren't uh back in the service post war or they were taken out of service at the end of the war and never returned to service but the iowa class battleships have a very very good reason not to have portholes in the hall much like the preceding south dakota class battleships they have an internal armored belt with an internal armored belt and the holding bulkhead behind it there aren't any you can't put a porthole in you put a porthole in on your interior bulkhead and it's just looking into about a six foot deep dark void space within the shell plating on the outside so it seems like iowa class battleships do not have portholes for two reasons one it doesn't fit the type of armor design they have and two the u.s navy just had an aversion to it during world war ii above the main deck like in the superstructure as you can see here it's another story entirely and while we're on the subject of portholes most of the window type glass fittings on the ship are round that is a strength thing uh you've got all this weight of steel the superstructure above it so you cut a square hole and that's putting a lot of weight on the arch you make a round hole then the weight is being evenly distributed so that's why most ships have round windows the exception you'll see on battleship new jersey is the windows around the bridge which are large and square they're not supporting any structure above that in fact they weren't even there as built they were added on later just about all of the windows on the ship can be opened in some way for the portholes they tend to either swing up and be chained or swing to the side and be chained in place for the bridge windows and they are strong enough that you can leave them closed but the guns fine for the bridge windows right above turret two you would always crank them down before you fire the gun so the overpressure doesn't destroy the windows another feature of portholes that you don't see on the the bridge windows is what are called battle ports so a porthole is actually three separate layers there is the airport which is just you've got the window open it's just it's just the hole in the hole the porthole which is you've now closed that piece of glass over it and the battle port which is a piece of metal that then closes over the porthole so these up here on the 08 level bridge are relatively small and thin you've got a way you can tighten them in place keep them all water tight and airtight for these up here in an unarmored part of the ship you can see that they're pretty thin they're more here to block light so that people can't see your ship at night the battle port coverings in the state rooms and in other parts of the ship in addition to blocking light are also pretty thick and sturdy and they provide some amount of protection uh also these don't have it but the other ones tend to have a water and air type gasket with them as well another type of window opening on the ship are the slits the viewing slits in the conning tower these also have like a square opening that rolls up and down on a gear that you can crank from the inside they're more for ventilation than actually being able to see so you would have them open most of the time but if you're worried about nbc warfare nuclear biological or chemical you can close those and get a pretty good seal our 04 windows were removed at some point i suspect at the end of the ship's career as spare parts for the other iowas that were kept in service nbc warfare was a big concern on io-class battleships in 1991 when they were operating in the persian gulf against iraq which was believed to have chemical weapons and to have used them in warfare before so my guess is that's why battleship new jersey does not have them there anymore we do still have them on the 05 level of the conning tower because that is open to the weather the one on the o4 level you still got the bridge windows around it the last type of viewport type window that you sometimes see a few a very small number of the watertight doors have a small round glass covered opening in them uh specifically so you can look out before you throw the door open and like wing somebody in the passageway with it in particular the large doors on broadway have these small viewports and that may also allow you to see well there's flooding over there i don't want to open this door there's a fire over there i don't want to open this door all of these windows do seem to be several layers of glass it doesn't seem to be plexiglas or plastic or anything else like that so this has been a 10 minute video on windows if i worked on a submarine it would have been a much quicker video what's an obscure feature you'd like to see us highlight in a future video let us know in the comment section down below battleship new jersey receives operating support from the new jersey department of state also from a number of other businesses and private individuals like yourselves we really appreciate your support you can continue to support us through the donation link in the description below or by liking sharing and subscribing so more people find out about the channel and our museum thanks for watching

Channel: Battleship New Jersey

Views: 73,492

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Id: lU6Ci0YWTEk

Length: 9min 20sec (560 seconds)

Published: Thu May 05 2022