The Evolution of Navy Sleeping Arrangements

[Music] hi i'm ryan samanski curator for battleship new jersey museum and memorial today we're going to talk about the enlisted bunks on the battleship when world war ii korea and vietnam era crew members come back to visit the ship often they're disappointed because many uh of their living and working spaces are completely different than how they would have been when they served on board and this isn't because the museum has gone around and made massive changes to things in a couple of instances we've uh deleted redundant birthing compartments to install exhibits and things like that like the room that we're in right now but by and large we've left the majority of the birthing compartments intact to how they were in 1991 when the ship was decommissioned the problem is starting in 1975 the military transitioned out of being a draft force to an all-volunteer force this is very much a result of the american experience in vietnam and that old draft or that all volunteer forced has continued to the present day now the problem is you can draft anybody under the sun and put them in a battleship and be like you're going to sleep on this chicken wire thing good luck and what can i do everybody's drafted but for a volunteer if you had the choice you're interested in volunteering for the military and you've got the choice between going into the air force and sleeping in a bed on an air force base the army and sleeping in a foxhole or the navy and sleeping on a mattress that's approximately one inch thick which choice are you going to go with so the navy had to make changes during this time period to continue to get the volunteers they needed to maintain the us navy so some of those changes include installing closed circuit televisions around the ship in fact battleship new jersey got its own television studio in the 1980s when we were reactivated they include larger lockers and allowing crew members to bring their civilian clothes on board prior to that they were only allowed to bring their uniforms on board and civilian clothes had to be left in lockers uh ashore and then you would leave the ship in your uniform change into your clothes for liberty have to come back and change in the uniform before you come back to the ship uh so then they was like yeah that's that's a little much you can bring uniforms on board can't wash them in the ship's washer and dryer but you can have them on board now at least and they add air conditioning and finally they increase the comfort of sailors and the privacy slightly by changing from this old type of pipe rack to the coffin racks as they're called when you come on board today the coffin racks are 80 inches long so people always look at them like how did they fit in there like i'm only 72 inches tall so you can fit a curator in one of these pretty easy it was these where you had issues fitting people in so whenever you come out and visit the battleship you can see what the coffin racks are like and those are extremely similar to contemporary beds that you would see on an active duty ship so if you're an individual considering going into the navy and you want to know what that experience is like a visit to a museum ship like battleship new jersey or some of our other sister ships that served in the 70s 80s and 90s is not a bad idea to get the experience you can also get this experience by spending the night on board during our overnight program there's a link for the overnight program in the description below so for this video we're going to talk a little bit more about the pipe racks that were on ships and why they're removed so one of the things that's great about the pipe rack is during the day when you're not sleeping the pipe racks can be folded up like this this makes it easier for getting under there with a swab it gives you more room in the space in between these bunks uh to have a group of guys sit down and play a game of cards on trash can lid or something like that gives you room for your free time these were often installed in ships that were overloaded with crews based on what they were originally designed to do for example new jersey's designed for about 2 000 sailors however uh she had up to 2700 when you factor in the admiral staffs the extra anti-aircraft guns that are added the more modern electronics that are added uh just during world war ii so within a couple of years of when she was designed and when the navy comes up with the billets for the ship so these you can really cram into spaces you can even hang them in mess decks and things like that and then during the day when when you've got mess hours on just fold them up out of the way so that's the good thing about them the bad thing about that is you've got zero privacy like the backs open the sides open top so everything's open people can see you uh wherever you are you can't change your clothes in privacy you've got no alone time here if you just want to close yourself in and read a book on battleship new jersey there are even curtains that you can pull across the bunks so that you are more or less alone in your bunk so living on the battleship in world war ii was a very communal experience living on board in the 1980s was more communal than nowadays but not too much so on board modern ships uh instead of having huge open birthing spaces with hundreds of sailors in them that's an exaggeration but around 100 sailors in some of our larger birthing spaces they have more staterooms so you might only have five or six guys you're sharing a room with instead of everybody under the sun so more and more privacy is expected from these volunteers and so modern ships have changed their accommodations based on what you see on new jersey the pipe racks come in two different types and this kind of chicken wire sort here is in my opinion the worse type there's another sort that is canvas if you want to see one of those check out the cruiser salem up in quincy massachusetts and there's probably some other museum ships that have them but that's a canvas sheet stretched on here and it's it's just uh rope that laces is on there so if you want a looser mattress you can loosen that rope and it'll hang if you want a firmer mattress you can tie it tighter with this what you get is what you have and this is also louder but this doesn't burn the the canvas can burn uh so it seems like both the wire type and the canvas type are used interchangeably i've even seen ships built at the same shipyard at around the same time rolling off with one ship has wire one ship as canvas so i'm not entirely sure how the decision was made it might be that the wire ones are heavier so you see ships with huge reserves of buoyancy like the battleships getting these while smaller ships get the canvas ones but i've seen destroyers with both ways so not sure why that is uh if you want a firmer mattress on this all you can do is ask one of the carpenter's mates or they become damage control men later on to cut you a piece of plywood to lay on there to put your mattress on there's nothing you can do to tighten this if you want something looser go join the air force yeah these don't change up so that's another difference here i will say even though uh the things on battleship new jersey during world war ii are primitive compared to what we have in the 80s it was still pretty good to be a u.s navy sailor versus serving in other countries some other countries you were still using hammocks as if it was the age of sale and in the u.s navy you're still issued hammocks but by the time new jersey is commissioned everybody has their own bed there probably isn't any hot racking going on on the ship except possibly during something like a magic carpet run although i have heard that they set up cots for sailors being transported like that rather than make them hot rack hot racking is when you have to share your bunk with another sailor so because the crew is working 24 hours a day when you roll out of your bed somebody else rolls in and the bed is still hot that's pretty uh well known from submarines but we don't have any evidence that it happened on on battleships i haven't heard any evidence that ever happened on battleships uh and magic carpet is at the end of the war when we're bringing all these service members home uh oftentimes navy ships that were being relieved would be overloaded with army troops marines other people who aren't ship's company just to get them home quickly after four years at the front get them out of here so new jersey is still pretty well off compared to other country ships for example battleship yamato had air conditioning battleship yamato had air conditioning and even had an elevator running up the central fire control tower so she was an extremely modern ship in many regards while new jersey you do not have any of those features no elevators very little air conditioning primarily limited to magazines and radio and radar rooms where the equipment is hot to keep the equipment cool not the sailors so oftentimes you see pictures of u.s navy sailors just laying on deck in the shade where there's at least a breeze rather than sleeping in their bunks however if you're a japanese sailor on yamato they took your mattresses away because those were flammable and replaced it with shoring timbers so you had to sleep on wooden boards instead of getting a one-inch thick mattress like you do in the u.s navy so depending on how you look at it this stuff is worse than what you have on a mountain ship better than what many of your contemporary sailors for other nations would have had during world war ii even on comparably modern ships at that time so what sort do you think is better the only reason the navy was able to install coffin racks in new jersey is because the crew drops from 2000 to 1600 with these pipe racks you can just keep adding them they're designed to be stacked about three high but we have images of world war two where they're stacked four and five high as you add more crew you just reduce the space between them and i've heard some sailors say there wasn't even enough room to roll over i've got a 19-inch uh shoulder length so if the beds are 18 inches together only a foot and a half between them you'd have to slide out of bed flip over and then slide back in and that seems to be a pretty common experience throughout world war ii but what do you think was better these lighter ones that you can add more of or the ones that give you more privacy let us know in the comments 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 the support you guys have given us there's a link in the description below if you'd like to continue donating to support the museum you can also support us by liking sharing and subscribing so that more people find the museum and our channel thanks for watching

Channel: Battleship New Jersey

Views: 193,444

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Id: fC_-QSBmEb4

Length: 12min 26sec (746 seconds)

Published: Fri Jul 15 2022