New Torpedoes

[MWALLEN]

I'll get photos next Saturday as I finally get to go back down to the sub.

[MWALLEN]

Here are photo's of our new torpedoes.

Mark A.

[Tom Bowser]

What Mod # is your 27? Ours are Mod 4 manuf 1954. Yours makes 15 that I have found, these are rare.
Tom Bowser

[Mark Sarsfield]

Yeah.  It's nice that we got one.  It will introduce the fact to the public that acoustic torpedoes had their beginnings during the war.  We don't have any mounting rails in the rear torpedo room.  So, Rick said that his initial plan to is to put in on chocks on the floor like you see it in the photos.

[Tom Bowser]

We have found that the MK 27 is a bitch to load in the tube. There must have been a different set of rollors on the skids and for in the tubes because it sure doesn't roll on what we have. A couple of the boats have a different rollar assembly just before the tube and that maybe what was used. The Torsk sank the last two Japanese Destroyers at the end of the war using these.
Tom Bowser

[Darrin]

We have the Mk 27 and the Mk 37 onboard along with the Mk 45 Nuke weapon, the Mk 37 in Tube #7 (The tube that shot the last weapon in WWII) is going to back hauled in a couple of months and a different weapon put in it's place (I think another Mk 45) our mine tables do have rollers on them to help ease with loading the weapons, with our FTR we have to pull our ladder out to load a weapon into tube #2 and then there is a lot of adjustments that have to be made to get the weapon to go in because over time the rollers are no longer aligned from what I have been told and it is a nasty dirty job to get them realigned.. we used to check alignment every time we went into the yards for overhaul or SRP(Selected Reuitilization Plan aka mini overhaul) rarely did we have to do anything other then check the boresight to verify ours were still aligned.

[Paul Farace]

The Mark 27 Cutie was a very valuable weapon in the last year of the war... saving the bacon of many US subs.  It doesn't roll in the tube well? Could this be a result of the fact that they were intended to swim out of the tubes? Suggestion for TORSK, since the Cutie (the second to the last torpedo you fired at the Coastal Defense Vessel, not really a DD) was fired from that tube, why not put one in said tube?

As for the Cutie itself, the orange head is a color used after about 1960. The exercise heads for COD's focus date of 1952 were yellow, so we removed the orange and used yellow when it had to be restored. It looks like the Cutie has the "as-built" exercise head. This was too expensive for the Navy to order all they needed. So the USN decided to take the explosives out of standard warheads and back fill them with a plaster-like mix for ballast. If your exercise head has this mix as ballast, REMOVE IT!!! It holds moisutre and eventually your beautiful exercise head bubbles up with rust from below!  It nearly destroyed our head, but an autobody repair shop was able to do wonders in restoring it ($500, even with a generous discount).  Our war/exercise head lacks the cast-in ring on the top and has an open plug for the detonator.  Your cutie looks to be in good shape, and that brown coating is tough to replicate if it is lost.

PF

[Darrin]

Paul,
we are going to be removing the 27 out of tube #7 (which sank the last Japanese warship in WWII) and then replacing it with another weapon, a big thing you have to remember when trying to tube load weapons in tubes that haven't been maintained for many years is that the rollers inside of the tubes have to be greased and made to roll freely prior to the loading and may or may not be out of alignment so it makes it even harder to load them. Then you get more fun if there is an up angle on that side of the boat instead of a down angle, loading weapons is not a fun job on these boats and the LA's had hydraulics on them to help but we still had to do all of the maintenance on the tubes and annualy we tube loaded 1 weapon using block and tackle just so we knew how to do it for that oh crap situation where we lost hydraulics in the room for some reason.
Darrin

[MWALLEN]

Between the reenactors, the Creek students, and other help I woud think that most or all of the deck would be completed by the fall.

Hey Mark...Fall of what year?   

[Rick]

Ok Ok.  No ones perfect.   At least it is getting done.     

[JohnG]

Hey don't mess with us Creek kids! If we knew how to cut the wood and if Joseph could learn what a ratchet is. (picking on him lol) then we could get that thing done in no time!

Plus, where else would you find some free labor 4-5 days a week for 2 hours.

[MWALLEN]

Yeah Rick, don't I know it.

I think everyones expectations, including mine, were a bit high.  Until I got started on this back in May, I had no idea how much work was involved.

And now for another of my shameless plugs...Dec. 13th work day...come one, come all.

John - I reserve the right to mess with anyone...and I'd absolutely LOVE some free labor...say on Dec. 13th.   

[Tom Bowser]

Here are a couple of photos of one of our MK 27's we found in the scrap pile. The Park had discarded it when it started to rust and it set in the scrap pile for years. we were told we were wasting our time. Took two weeks and cost us $40. The brown color is had to duplicate but we came close. This is not the final color.
Tom

[Ctwilley]

Do any of the other boats have any extra torpedo straps? I've been trying to find a couple or at least just one to have reverse engineered.

[Darrin]

Corey,
the Portsmouth boats straps are different from the EB straps, you may want to take one of the correct ones that you have on Batfish and reverse engineer that, that will make sure that you have the correct straps..