Batfish Fluorescent Lighting

[Mark Sarsfield]

Paul,

  As requested, here are photos of some of the fluorescent fixtures...

http://www.352nd-mlha.com/Batfish%20General/Con%20Fluorescent%201.JPG

http://www.352nd-mlha.com/Batfish%20General/Con%20Fluorescent%202.JPG

http://www.352nd-mlha.com/Batfish%20General/Con%20Fluorescent%203.JPG

http://www.352nd-mlha.com/Batfish%20General/Mess%20Fluorescent%201.JPG

http://www.352nd-mlha.com/Batfish%20General/Mess%20Fluorescent%202.JPG

http://www.352nd-mlha.com/Batfish%20General/Mess%20Fluorescent%20Starters.JPG

[Paul Farace]

WOW, you have a fluorescent lighting musuem in the making!!!   

The good news is they all look pretty damn authentic!  The 201 and 202 photos show WW II fluorescent light fixtures!!! Like the ones COD lost to some sumbitch who wanted them for his workshop!!   

The only thing is they had white diffusers instead of the clear plastic used in yours... my guess is that over years the plastic got funky, cracked, turned yellow, and was replaced with clear plastic. You can use white plastic sheet and make them "orginal" again.  The other fixtures look like the kind I think I saw in TROUT last year. I willl look at my photos to see if I caught any... maybe the Torsk guys remember better... they spent much more time aboard than I did.

So you don't have to rip anything out!      

PF

[Mark Sarsfield]

So, the crew's mess (and ward room) lights should have opaque white plastic for diffusers/lenses?

[Paul Farace]

Opaque means no light gets through... translucent, yes!        Only the Polish subs have opaque windows behind their screen doors!   

I think TROUT either got new lights late in her career, or they retrofitted milk white diffusers over them... see photo below.

In any case, from what I see on TROUT, all of your fixtures LOOK AUTHENTIC!!! nobody went to Home Depot and got lights for BATFISH...   

Good!

PF

[Mark Sarsfield]

I see, now. We don't have any lenses/diffusers on the little lights on the boat.  They just have a metal grill.  Maybe they once had them, but they are long gone. 

[Paul Farace]

SOOOO one of the BATFISH WWII fluorescent boxes is from the wardroom!!!!    IF so YEEEAAAAA! I finally think I know what has been missing on COD for low, these many decades!! I just need to replicate six instead of four of these boxes!!!!

See, yall been helping COD TOO!

PF

 

[Mark Sarsfield]

I didn't take any photos of the ward room ones, but they are exactly the same as the big ones in the crew's mess, which I did photograph.  The small, boxy ones are from the control room.  I think the ward room has two fluorescent fixtures and a number of incandescent fixtures.

[Paul Farace]

Maybe they just had the grills, which prevent glare and send the light down, and not spill it all over the place. I have seen similar lights elsewhere and they didn't have the milk diffusers...

Here is my bitch for energy saving around the house... why is it that we have a two or three bulb fixture to light a room when one 60-w bulb will do fine? The answer is we put heavy diffusers that cut down about 75% of the light!  We have a light on the ceiling of our utility room that needs three bulbs to light the room... until I took off the glass disk difuser and one bulb is brither than three in the same fixture with the glass diffuser on!! NO KIDDING!!!

Put that in your pipe and smoke it Al Gore!

PF
 

[Lance Dean]

LOL You are right there Paul.

And good to see such beneficial interaction going on here.  Makes me feel good.   

[Mark Sarsfield]

We use the compact fluorescents at home not because I'm trying to save the planet... it can save itself.  We do it to save money.  I agree that we don't need 3 and 4-bulb fixtures.  We have a lot of ceiling fans that need 4 bulbs, but we only use two in each.