Photo: ...Battleship North Carolina...Engine Lathes...

I wonder what the long 'lance' is that is resting on the nearest lathe's bed. Dennis

Maybe for knocking out a dead center in the head stock.

the one in front looks like a Lodge and Shipley, but I could be wrong, often am.
John

At least they are bolted down. Regards Tyrone.

Tyrone Shoelaces said:

At least they are bolted down. Regards Tyrone.

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...imagine trying to out run one when it decided to cross the room...

Thanks, Lathe Fan. Another great photo !

It looks like there is a third engine lathe to the extreme left of the photo, with just a hint of the front bedway and leadscrew or feed rod tail bearing showing. A box-column drill press is also visible.

The lance laid at the rear of the chip pan on the lathe in the approximate center of the photo probably has nothing to do with the machine tools, and is probably a job of some sort for use around the ship. The pointed tip looks to have possible wrench flats, and may have a hole drilled into each flat. My own guess is the lance is some sort of cleaning tool. Around a steam powered battleship, burning the Navy Standard heavy fuel oil (Bunker C), there would be considerable deposits of soot and slag in the fireside of the boilers and in places like the economizers and superheaters. The boilers as well as the economizers and superheaters all had permanently mounted steam soot blowers. The lance could well have been something used with steam to clean odd areas where the soot blowers did not reach. It might also have been used for clearing some piping subject to fouling. On a ship the size of the North Carolina, the amount of equipment and machinery that was needed to propel the ship was staggering. The weaponry was a whole other subject and was at least as staggering as the ship's propulsion plant. Combined, there was enough machinery and equipment to keep maintenance and repair crews continually busy.

I know the North Carolina and her sisters got some of the first Fairbanks-Morse 38 D 8 1/8 diesels for "black start" or emergency generating sets. I was on a job where one of the F-M diesel gensets that came off either the "Washington" or the "North Carolina" had been bought for plant power. It was almost a prototype F-M opposed piston diesel, as there were some significant design differences compared to the same series engines made for WWII a short time later. Leave it to F-M and the US Navy. It was the only opposed piston F-M diesel engine I ever saw with chrome plated crankcase handhole covers, and a lot of "brightwork" on it. There was a manual for the F-M genset, and it was a US Navy manual and stated it was for the F-M gensets on the Washington, North Carolina, and (I believe) two other heavy cruisers of the same class. At the time, I was surprised to learn that four (4) of these generating sets, of about 1250 Kw apiece were needed on each ship for black start and emergency power. That says a lot about the size of the ship. The main propulsion and ship's service electric power relied on steam turbines.

It would be interesting to learn the full "manifest" of machine tools carried on the "North Carolina". There may have been smaller lathes in shops dealing with electric motor repairs, or with fine work on stuff like fire control and rangefinders.

I wonder if the lathes and other heavier machine tools in this photo were set into what became the machine shop while the ship was being built. After the machine tools were set in location, bulkheads and the deck above were built around them. One of those situations where the machine tools were aboard the ship, with no chance of removal until the ship was scrapped.

The Navy is (or was) a service bound by traditions and rigid thinking. When the USS Cole was hit by terrorists in Yemen, one of the explosions hit the machine shop area. Damage was quite severe. The Cole was salvaged and taken to a shipyard for repair aboard what amounted to a seagoing tilt bed ("the Blue Marlin"). When the extent of the damage was determined, the Navy put an order in for replacements for the damaged machine tools in the Cole's machine shop. One of the machine tools requiring replacement was a Lodge and Shipley engine lathe. By the time this happened, L & S, along with Monarch and Sidney, were all absorbed by Lucas Precision. Lucas Precision has a stock of the remaining raw castings that each machine tool builder had on hand when they were bought by Lucas Precision. Lucas Precision has parts and drawings for all of the machine tools from the manufacturers they absorbed. Lucas Precision supplied the US Navy with a new L & S engine lathe. It was probably one very expensive lathe, and may well be the last manual heavy duty engine lathe built in the USA. With the gaping hole in the side of the Cole and the Cole drydocked for repairs, chances are the new L & S lathe went into the Cole's shop thru that hole.

I know the US Navy liked Reed and Prentice geared head engine lathes and a number of them wound up on ships. The US War Production Board seem to have arrived at an almost generic engine lathe design at the onset of WWII. Whether the lathes were made by L &S, R & P, or Sidney, they were close in overall size and appearance. The lathes in this photo have that classic look of the "generic" WWII era engine lathes.

Not only are those bolted down, they have custom boss's welded to the floor to match the machine's footprint! That's definitely commitment right there. Those lathes were staying on board for the long haul.

I like seeing Military machining units like this. It's interesting to see what and how they did/do things to build parts. Efficiency and run-time seem to have a little different meaning when your job isn't necessarily trying to make a buck.

My father-in-law was a helicopter pilot in the army (hueys and chinooks) and he said that the machine shop units out in the field could build anything they needed. It seems like those shops didn't really build parts to fill orders per-say, but rather built parts to get jobs done quicker while ordered parts were in transit from the warehouse.

The front and center is indeed an L&S, other than being several feet shorter, identical to the one I run almost daily. 22" Model X.The one against the wall I am not sure about. It has that Axleson over-the-top clutch lever, but the shifters and other stuff looks wrong for Axleson. Not enough showing of the one to the left to make it out.

M.B. Naegle said:

...could build anything...

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My father served on the Battleship New Jersey. He often said the NJ had a complete machine shop on board that "could build anything".

Great pics Lathefan,,, If indeed these ships had all of this fantastic machinery , as they did ,, there must also been a steel stock , so just about anything could be made . We have all been position of ordering a piece of metal to do a one off job ,, So presumably the "Store" mustve been massive , Cause I doubt if they knew what was going to be made on each trip? or maybe they did?
Chris NZ

Mounting any machinery aboard a ship was different than mounting it in a shop or plant ashore. Ships move with the seas they are in, taking a roll or moving up or down along the centerline of the ship. For this reason, machinery aboard a ship, whether it is in the engine room, auxiliary machinery spaces, or in a ship's machine shop, is not only bolted down, but "chocked". Chocking is a means of stopping a machine from moving parallel to the deck or floorplates or foundation it is bolted to. Chocking may be done by bolting and dowelling steel blocks to the structural members (such as beams), or the "foundation" ( a foundation on a ship is a fabricated steel unit which is then fastened to the ship's frames and structural members). The chocks bear against the vertical surfaces of a machinery base, and are set solidly so there is no chance for any movement. Once welding came into use, chocking was often done by clamping steel chocks to the sides of a machinery base, then welding the chocks to the ship's structure or the machinery foundation. In more recent times, chocking is done using epoxy resins. A dam is built around the machinery base, usually by welding steel flat bar set on edge, to the deck plates or foundation steel. Once the machinery is levelled or aligned and the mounting bolts pulled down, the resin is poured into the space between the dam and the machinery base. The modern epoxy chocking resins (such as "Chockfast Orange") are amazing, and have all the approvals for use on naval and merchant ships.

On a naval vessel such as the "North Carolina", the need to bolt down machinery and chock it is even more important. The shock when the heavy guns were fired would likely jolt the whole ship, and anything not solidly bolted and chocked was going to move.

Of course, the fact the lathes are aboard a ship raises the age-old question: "how were they levelled". In dead calm water at a pier, I am sure the lathes could have been levelled. The trick was making sure there was a very rigid foundation under the lathes. This was the ship's structural framing and deck plates. Once the lathes were shimmed and levelled and had "solid bearing contact" with the ship's structure, I would think the assumption was the lathe was going to remain rigid and solidly supported and move with the ship. But, a ship is a fairly live thing, even a ship like the "North Carolina". A ship in heavy seas can experience some flexure of the hull. If the ship's hull spans two high/wide waves, the hull is essentially a simply supported beam, wanting to sag in the middle. This is referred to as "sagging". The opposite is when the ship is supported on the crest of one single wave approximately midships- this is "hogging". Any ship will have some flexure under these kinds of conditions. The ship's machine shop may have been built as a sort of "stand alone" structure, heavily framed and able to hold the machine tools rigidly, yet built so there was some "translation" or "relative movement" possible between the machine shop foundation or structure and the rest of the ship. Chocking and restraints were there, holding each machine tool solidly in place. How the matter of keeping the machine tools solidly mounted yet not transmitting any hull flexure into them is something to consider. I am sure that the Navy took this into account when they designed the ship structurally.

Mike C. said:

The front and center is indeed an L&S, other than being several feet shorter, identical to the one I run almost daily. 22" Model X.The one against the wall I am not sure about. It has that Axleson over-the-top clutch lever, but the shifters and other stuff looks wrong for Axleson. Not enough showing of the one to the left to make it out.

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The one on the right looks like a Reed-Prentice, of late '30's to mid-'40's vintage

cheers

Carla

lathefan said:

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...the Battleship North Carolina is anchored in Wilmington North Carolina...my wife and I took the self guided tour when we were down there quite a few years ago...so I have been in that shop...at that time there was mesh screen erected around the machines from floor to ceiling...painted white with yellow trim...making photography difficult...and if I remember correctly...the machines had also been painted white with yellow handles and cranks...not a good idea in my opinion...but probably done in some misguided attempt to please tourists...the website is HERE

"I am sure that the Navy took this into account when they designed the ship structurally."

One would hope. Then again, various books by naval historians point out that the British (who have been in the navy business for a while too, ya know) had issues with ships bending in waves, and thermal issues. As in, there was an aircraft carrier where the elevator didn't work half the time because the elevator design didn't account for how much the shape of the ship's hull changed in the sun. Battleships that worked OK in North Atlantic service but were hot houses in the tropics.

Then again, it seems there were some things where the US was ahead of the UK. This historian (book is packed away) claimed that the North Carolina's could steam farther and faster than the KGVs, on somewhat less fuel, with some 10K tons less displacement. Basically, the US ships had less steam leakage, fuel leakage, better turbines, better support machinery.

This was a British author with a very pro-British Navy slant, so these were interesting remarks.

I toured one BB (Massachutes, I think) - I think I posted shop pictures somewhere on PM. Walking around it, what is remarkable is that given its large size, it's bloody cramped most places. Getting any maintence or repair done must have been quite a chore.

My step father was engine man chief aboard the tug Cherokee,USCG,when they towed the North Carolina into its final port.

The Cherokee was a very large tug,built to tow damaged ships away from battle areas. It was about 250' long,IIRC(been a long time). The Cherokee ended up towing the North Carolina and the other tugs into the final port.

The Cherokee was a Coast Guard vessel in 1957. The captain would get all excited when bringing the tug into the dock,and would invariably crash into the dock. At least,this is what I was told(about both these stories).

One of the Navy's most effective critics on how things were done, designed, built

William Sowden Sims

Usually in trouble with his bosses of course, but got his fourth star in 1930.

Also incidentally in charge of the destruction of large numbers of German U boats circa WW1

carla @ tactical link said:

The one on the right looks like a Reed-Prentice, of late '30's to mid-'40's vintage

cheers

Carla

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Carla Nails It

Here is the RP from the year before BB-55 was laid down

The 'lance' on the lathe is one of the two harpoons I get shoved in my arm three times a week under the guise of dialysis treatment. At least it feels that large. And long!

I toured the North Carolina in August of 2012. The machine shop is screened in, as lathefan said, with expanded metal making "photo ops" difficult. I do remember seeing two lathes their, both South Bends. It looked like one was a "heavy 10" and the other was a 13", maybe even a 16". They both had, what I believe, was the longest standard bed offered by South Bend for that particular swing. If I "member" correctly both of these South Bend lathes had single tumbler quick change gear boxes which would date their manufacture to1945 or earlier.

The following is a quote from the current South Bend (Grizzly) web site, "Our largest customers are the US Navy and Army as well as many departments of our Government."

Vlad