Batfish Control Room Photos

[Mark Sarsfield]

A few weeks ago, I started putting more red bulbs in the con.  The idea is that when we do a reenactment we can turn off and on certain bulbs to rig for day or night lighting.  Unfortunately, we have a reverse polarity problem and it's easy to blow fuses if the outer socket touches the light housing.  So, I left them all screwed in and in the on position - some light fixtures still have the on-off switch up top.  It gives it a nice "we mean business" look.  I did the same up in the control tower.

Anyway, here is our control room with some close-ups of air radar, APR receivers, and the 1MC looking cleaner on the outside.  My camera doesn't focus well in dim light, but it's about 8 years old.

www.352nd-mlha.com/Batfish%20CR/Control%20Room.html

[Paul Farace]

No bad at all!!!
BATFISH, MARLIN and RAZORBACK are the only subs I have not seen in the flesh, so to speak... gotta do that sometime soon!

PF

[Mark Sarsfield]

You definitely have to come down, just so we can hear your rantings in person and pick your brain.

[Lance Dean]

Mark, quick question about those bulbs.  I noticed on the Drum that (I think) red covers were put over regular bulbs.  Where do you find red bulbs?  I haven't looked, but I don't recall ever seeing any at Wal-Mart.

[Mark Sarsfield]

They are 25W party bulbs and Wally World does sell them, as well as just about any other store that sells light bulbs.  All of the globes on the Batfish are frosted white.  So, we're making due. Also, the Batfish has very few globed lights remaining on the boat.  Most are exposed enamel porcelain fixtures.  The largest quantity of globed fixtures are actually the emergency lights.

[Lance Dean]

Aww yeah, time to get a red bulb for the 'puter room!  I wonder what Emily will think...

Good work on the control room btw Mark.

[Paul Farace]

Some facts about submarine light bulbs

The standard WWII lightbulb was a 40 or 50 w GE Mazda bulb, lightly frosted.  They were a bit shorter than our modern bulbs. As built, the subs had regular bulbs. By the time they got to the war zone, they were issued depthcharge bulbs... basically the same bulb with a hard rubber ring where the brass base meets the glass neck, allowing the base to be removed if the glass was shattered.

The red bulbs were in each compartment, except the engine rooms and maneuvering room, which were white light all the time. The red lights were on one circuit, often called the port circuit, and the white lights on the starboard circuit.. the red bulbs were ceramic coated and DIM!!! You can still buy them, but they are not very bright. This was an issue even in WWII so the dials were all backlight and frontlit with tiny "stinger" lights...  The party bulbs can be purchased in cases and are not cheap, but Sam's Club or Cosco should be a good deal.  The plastic coating will soon begin cracking and will cast some funny shadows... but hey, the ceramics are dim and REEAALLLY Expensive!
The compartments might have all red on one side and white on the other...
There are armored cable fixtures with steamtights (glass jars) in both frosted white and red. The funny thing is the red lenses go on the armored fixtures with the word "BLUE" cast into them.  Why is the word blue on them?  Because when the Navy built the boats and ordered the fixtures, they thought blue light preserved night vision... when the did tests to verify this, it was determined that red, not blue light was best for dark adaptation!

There are shallow frosted glass globes that are wide and have a bowl like shape instead of the deep rounded bottom glass globes... these are Magazine steamtights, apparently the magazines had lower headroom or somesuch reason.

My concern for the future is that at some point we will be using LED lights in our fixtures and the old style glass bulbs will be $12 each!

Paul

[Lance Dean]

Paul, when are you going to get around to writing a book?   

Did any of the fleet boats also use blue bulbs in addition to the reds and whites?  I seem to recall blue lights in some submarine movie, and I didn't know what they meant or were used for.

[Mark Sarsfield]

For what's it's worth, the Silent Hunter IV game uses blue lights on the older boats like the Old S Class models.  So, rigging for red is actually rigging for blue.  It's kind of weird when you are so used to red.

Paul, I know that there are multiple light circuits in most compartments so that rigging for red was/is as simple as turning a few switches.  Most of our light switches on the Batfish are still intact, but we keep chicken wire over them to keep visitors from playing with them - I need to do the same for the 1MC switches and knobs.  I'm sure that Rick would let us have free access to the switches during a weekend tour event.  It's just a matter of finding each "string" and putting the appropriate color bulb in each fixture.  Most of our switches are still labeled.  So, assuming that the boat lighting hasn't been rewired too much, port lights should be just that.  Same for starboard.

I'm sure that the Batfsh had a lot more globes at one point, but it probably became a real pain to constantly have to unscrew the whole fixture to replace a burned out bulb.  Most lights on the main [interior] deck are shaded or bare sockets.  All lights below the main deck are bare sockets.  Every time I get on the boat and see a new compact fluorescent bulb in an obvious location, I put it below decks or in a location that the public can't directly see, like the officer bunk lights.  I'll then replace it with a clear or frosted bulb.  My goal is to get compact fluorescent bulbs out of public view and in all of the below deck sockets to save the park money on electricity and increase bulb life.

We have been installing clear 60W bulbs to give the fixtures an antique look.  I knew that they were the Mazda bulbs and were probably 40W or 50W, but I didn't realize that they were lightly frosted.  It's a toss-up between authenticity and getting repeat customers.  As much as I like authenticity, visitors wouldn't want to come onto a dingy, dimly-lit boat that smelled of sweat, oil, cigarettes, hamburger grease, etc.  Plus, we work on the boat often enough that I welcome a bright light above my head when Im trying to see into a dark, dusty electronics cabinet.

[Fred Tannenbaum]

In the late 1970s and early 1980s, the power company in Chicago basically gave you free lightbulbs or coupons for such. We Silversides volunteers used to take our free bulbs and install them throughout the boat. At this time, I can't recall how many watts they were. But the boat looked great with all the light sockets filled. It was bright but there still were plenty of shadows to create that "authentic" look.

Fred

[Paul Farace]

With COD being close to done, in terms of "apparent restoration" some of my effort goes into playing with the lighting... every bulb burning is not a good thing or accurate. But we have a different set of operational considerations. Like the crew's berthing... it was mainly dark... now I am not going to try and recreate that level of non-lighting, but I do want to keep it to a minimal few red bulbs (so as not to wake the sleeping crewmen!)...  sometimes creative dimness helps!



PF

 

[Mark Sarsfield]

We keep the crew's berthing dark with two red lamps.  Every other part of the boat is lit like a Christmas tree and I agree that it shouldn't be the case, except for the engine rooms and maneuvering.  As we get more red bulbs for oher compartments we'll transition the boat to a slightly darker ambiance, but we'll keep using 60W bulbs.