Machine Shop Aboard the Battleship Missouri

I had the opportunity to walk through one of the decks of the Mighty Mo a few days ago. One point of interest relevant to this forum was the machine shop. It was roped off so I couldn't go inside but I got a photo of the Lodge and Shipley lathe and a small radial arm drill from the doorway.

That's a Model G - phased out with the advent on the heavy duty 25" Model X around 1950

A shame the cool stuff is always roped off... did you get any shots of the engine room? I took a tour of the New Jersey several years ago, got to go up into one of the 16" gun turrets among other things. Very interesting. Jim

i believe the navy has repair ships with many more machines and even foundries. so ship needing repair doesnt have to go back to a certain port for minor battle damage repairs.
there is old book on navy foundry training that used to be sold by Lindsay publications that went out of business, book still on Amazon

I was able to take a tour in January 1979. I was suprized at the amount of deterioration the paint had taken. It had been a tourist attraction for 26 years by that time. The plack on the surrender deck made the hair on the back of my neck stand up.
I dont remember the machine shop. We didn't go to far into the ship.

mllud22 said:

I was able to take a tour in January 1979.

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It was recommissioned and refitted in the 1980s and took part in Operation Desert Storm 1991. It is today stationed in Pearl Harbor near the USS Arizona memorial as a museum.

wouldnt surprise me they can fly in a part on a airplane that lands on the water faster than many parts can be made in any shop with just manual machines.
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literally i have seen parts flown in across the world cause boss didnt want to wait weeks. overnight shipping to big airport then maybe transferred to smaller plane most parts can show up in 2 days give or take

jmm03 said:

did you get any shots of the engine room?

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Unfortunately, no. Only the first deck below the main deck was open and much of it, too, was off limits. Even so, it was still very interesting to see especially as part of a larger Pearl Harbor memorial tour.

I have seen what you have been talking about on the big MO. I have been aboard the machine shop on the USS Kearsrge at Norfold and the USS Frank Cable in Gaum. All their on board machine shops are 60's early 70's manual machines. The Uss Frank Cable is a repair ship. It had a larger machine shop with several machines. The Mayport Navel base in Fl. has about the same types of machines but larger shop. Very clean. The Pearl Harbor Machine shop right down on the harbor behind two check points has a large machine shop and larger machines. Still they are sending in rebuilt older machines. In Mechanicsburg navy depot in PA. was a big shop with hundreds working there at one time. They are small and still have ads to work there. Still rebuilding. The government release surplus stored machines ( old at the time },machines a few years ago. Nice machine and some never had been used. Those were a good fine.

Those would be cool too see as a grown up. when I was a kid in Japan I used to hang out at the naval machine shop in Yokuska japan, as well as the one on the USS Midway. we had a little one in Misawa Naval air station I used to goto alot as we had an awsum rod and gun club and they were always making parts for the clubs trap and skeet machines and working on some of these guys shotguns, I was the parts runner so to speak as I could ride my bike across the runway faster than you could drive around the base in a car.
I have a vague memory of some cool looking machines and stuff back then mostly huge lathes and huge multi spindle drill press's. the kids I hung around with there dads were machinists on the midway and also a few of them on the Base. 2-3 huge ass building right next to the Drydock, down the hill from the Chiefs club. we would ride our bikes in building from one end to the other end to see my friends Father.
If I recall the ejection seat shop on the midway had a little hand lathe and a mill. best friends dad was an ejection seat mechanic on the midway for 3 years, I spent most of my summers on the USS midway us kids were able to go anywhere on that ship back then except the bridge. the engine room was extreamly cool and 100 times bigger than the one my Dad worked in on the USS Orleck(dd886).
Funny cause I thought the USS MIDWAY was the biggest aircraft carrier ever until I saw the USS Enterprise about 10 years later. I was in AW

would love to go back in time and check them out to see what I was missing.

One of the neat features more-or-less unique to ship machine shops is the (low) overhead rail system so heavy parts (and tooling) can be moved in and out of the shop and to/from each machine. The rail cross-section is typically a small W beam, and the segments are very often bent in the hard direction to steer trolleys through hatches and around heavy equipment.

In the OP photos, the overhead rail serving the Monarch lathe is painted in yellow/black stripes.

There have been a couple of movies showing length-of-ship (or apparently so) shots of a central corridor in the Iowa-class battleships with all the hatches open and an overhead rail system pretty much the whole visible length. There's some sort of arrangement I've never been able to work out for bridging the gap in adjacent rails enforced by watertight doors.

sfriedberg said:

One of the neat features more-or-less unique to ship machine shops is the (low) overhead rail system so heavy parts (and tooling) can be moved in and out of the shop and to/from each machine. The rail cross-section is typically a small W beam, and the segments are very often bent in the hard direction to steer trolleys through hatches and around heavy equipment.

In the OP photos, the overhead rail serving the Monarch lathe is painted in yellow/black stripes.

There have been a couple of movies showing length-of-ship (or apparently so) shots of a central corridor in the Iowa-class battleships with all the hatches open and an overhead rail system pretty much the whole visible length. There's some sort of arrangement I've never been able to work out for bridging the gap in adjacent rails enforced by watertight doors.

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Interesting question. Maybe they had some sort of platform that they set up at the bulkhead, lower the load onto the platform, side it through, then pick it up again on the other side?

Cal

I remember going through the USS Lexington in Corpus Christi as a boy scout and asking my dad if they could build a whole new ship out of their machine shop. I doubt it now, but for sure the guys running those shops knew how to get a job done on limited time and resources.

You're not going to tell the boss you need a lathe with more features when your life REALLY does depend on it.

When the Yosemite was at Mayport one of my customers was stationed aboard. He was getting out of the Navy and when he left town he stopped by and showed me his going away present.

It was a really nice stainless cannon about 4-5" dia,5' long.
He had worked on it for quite a while.One of his mates told him that piece of stock was on the ship when he was on his first tour 20 years ago!

They told the story at the time by the marker on deck where they sigh the surrender. Was how one Japan dive bomber survive the crash on the deck near by. The crew wanted to kill him. The captain said no. The story that all ships point out to sea now. never ever inward again from that day forward.
At the Arizona site, The oil coming up from the ship. I think i heard it has stop now. The list of the men still there. That sure puts goose bumps on you.
One other thought. The Uss Frank Cable in Guam. It was 101 degrees every day we went aboard. It wasn't real bad with the heat on the second deck machine machine shop. I had to go down to the 3rd deck and fix a shear. If your not by one of the air vent with a little bit of air blowing on you, its bad. I had to get out of a corner and get air. The machine shops that I remember, was all the tie downs of big chucks and anything that could cause damage. Love all the stories that are printed about the machine shops. keep them going.

Mike

There were short sections of track at every watertight door. When they were moving something heavy they would lift the short sections by hand and bolt them in place. When done, they were removed and the doors were free to be closed at general quarters.

firefighterbill said:

There were short sections of track at every watertight door. When they were moving something heavy they would lift the short sections by hand and bolt them in place. When done, they were removed and the doors were free to be closed at general quarters.

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I saw something similar in an auto shop years ago. There was one central track and each bay had an off shoot of it. I think it was for pulling engines and moving them out to another area. Thinking back I dont have a clear memory of how the off shoots connected to the main beam.