Raising the Guns on Navy Battleship

When the ship was operational, plenty of hydraulic and electric power was available to train the guns. How do you raise a 238,000 pound barrel manually? With a big wrench! See how they did it.

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🎧 Video Transcription:

00:03
When the ship was taken out of commission the hydraulic fluid was replaced with a different type of fluid.
00:09
Not only did we not have enough electricity to run the electric motor, we also didn't have the proper fluids and lubricants to run it under power.
00:20
The last time I was up here we spent about 6 days just going through operators manuals and technical manuals and mechanically going through the chores and trying to figure out what the possibilities were to raise a two hundred thirty eight thousand pound gun barrel without electric power and without hydraulic power.
00:32
We went to the left gun down into the gun pit which is a space that's underneath the gun inside the gun room that's where the bien response is located for the elevating gear.
00:44
We took a three foot long wrench, put a three-foot cheater bar on there
00:48
One person acted as a break in the other person acted as a drive unit rotated the chef that gave us the elevation
Dan Pavalski took the first run on it and he probably wrenched on that pipe for the better part of five to ten minutes.
01:03
He passed it on to me I hid it for about another five minutes and then I had to pass it on to somebody else. It was a lot
of work and by about ten o'clock in the morning we were able to get that gun two or three up in the air.
01:14
Work didn't end there we went up to turret one, we moved the sheet metal off of there and what I would think would be record time.
01:23
And after that I had a couple of volunteers still waiting to do some more work and we went up to turret two - I started removing the sheet metal off of there so probably tomorrow
01:31
we got another five or six hours with
01:33
the work sheet metal will be off and probably in the next day or two we'll be looking at six to nine guns up in the air

01:39
About two months ago I saw the Iowa and I knew the whole history behind it and that was the last one and that there might be a possibility of it being scrapped.
01:50
And then when I found out that a group picked it up that's where this all started I saw that they had some pieces missing I didn't know what they were called as it turns out they're called bloomers and they go on the the back part of the 16-inch guns where it goes into the casement and they didn't have them
02:05
We manufacture awnings and canopies we're a custom fabric company.
02:09
I was on line and I just put a couple sentences out there that I'd be more than willing to give them a hand and if they'd let me do it I'd do it at no cost just donate it.
02:19
Ed from Evanston Awnings sent us the first test buckler the originals were very very heavy rubber three or four ply extremely stiff just so they could withstand the overpressure from the blast and a recoil of the gun, so they had to be very flexible.
02:33
And what I'm sitting underneath here is actually the upper hoop supports the buckler and maintains its shape as the gun elevates so that they don't get caught inside and become misshapen.
02:43
All the hoops were taken off so they could install some sheet metal covering for dehumidification purposes and then when they did that they actually cut off all the pad eyes that tell them, so just welding these back on to the ring here which is where you clamps are the butler
03:00
When they get it back it'll have a band that goes all around here they shove it into these openings It'll just wrap around and there's another band that goes around that and attaches it there everybody seems to think that the ones are on here they're either on the New Jersey or the Missouri
03:16
A lot of parts were borrowed back and forth goodyear says that they still have the blueprints micro copied somewhere but they don't know where nobody's working there that worked there when these were made.
03:30
So now it's just a matter of just looking at pictures and trying to copy it as best we can

Видео Raising the Guns on Navy Battleship канала Battleship USS Iowa Museum