Photo of The Day

[Arno Boudoiron]

Amazing pictures Don, thanks for sharing.

Arno

[NE Brownstone]

I have a question about those battle ships on that site, or battle ships in general.  I've heard that ships like the Bismark had 16" thick armor(maybe wrong, just going off what I remember).  My question is:  How was the armor made?  Was it cast in chunks and welded (seems unlikely during that era and even now) or was it plate steel laminated to thickness?  Or a combination of both?

Thought I'd throw it out there for general conversation.  I figure one of you military guys might know off hand.

[Ray Dunakin]

I've heard that ships like the Bismark had 16" thick (maybe wrong, just going off what I remember).  My question is:  How was the armor made?  Was it cast in chunks and welded (seems unlikely during that era and even now) or was it plate steel laminated to thickness?  Or a combination of both?

I always wondered about that myself!

[Gordon Ferguson]

It's an extremely complicated and technical subject but basically during the production of the steel amounts of Chrominum  and Nickel are added to the molten steel ....... The amount of carbon was also varied to produce the basic material. This was then rolled at a variety of temperatures to produce the hardening and or chemicals added to the top surface reheated and rolled again which change the chemical bonds in the top surface.

Depending on both the process and the manufacturer, this was top secret work, you ended up with a variety of steels some with and extremely hard but thin and brittle outer layer some with a greater depth of hardened steel. The process went through change as the switch from explosive shells to armoured piercing shells happened ........ There is another couple of chapters which cover changes to explosives, fusing mechanism, etc which all effected their destructive power against armour plate ......... The US and Britain led most of this development.

The armoured steel could be laminated to more ductile steel to produce a plate more capable of not only deflecting shells ..... The main aim of armoured plate, but also to absorb direct hits, again another story as the direction and angle of trajectories changed over time as muzzle velocities , range etc, changed with warship design and development.

Armoured plates were normally fitted on a substructure of beams, soft ( relatively) areas could be left during the manufacturing process to allow bolts to be fitted , where the plates butted against each other key ways were machines and keys fitted to lock plates together....... Plates built similar to walls to avoid joints running into each other and producing areas of weakness. From memory bolt, rivet fixing continued well into the 40's presumambly because of the difficulty of welding extremly thick plates ( 8 to 18 inches)
The substructure obviously produced empty cavities between the outer shell of plate and the inner ship hull, depending on the location these could be filled with wood or other materials to act as an obsorbant of explosive charges  ........ The large hull bulges you see on warships below the waterline were armoured plate to act as a defence against torpedoes in these the cavity was even left empty as a buoyancy aid or used to store non flammable liquids

There well may be inaccuracies in some of the above its along time since I studied this subject, but the basic ideas are correct

[marc_reusser]

Well, consider me educated.

[NE Brownstone]

Well, consider me educated.

Wow, no doubt!  Thanks gfadvance.  That's the best explanation/description I've ever heard about it.   I did a search years ago, but never came up with anything and anyone I asked on other forums came up blank.  Very interesting.  Thanks again.

[finescalerr]

Gordon, do you realize how intimidating it is to us uneducated louts when somebody asks a casual question about an arcane subject and a forum member presents such an outstanding answer? -- Russ

[David Emery]

A friend sent me this link of twentieth century American photographs that I thought might be of assistance to someone modeling this period. The photographs  are predominantly east coast and industrial but there are some rural southern pictures as well. The time span is 1865 to 1922.
Don

http://photosilke.blogspot.co.at/2013/03/historic-pictures-restored.html

This link has been blasted all over the net, and frankly it's starting to piss me off.

These pictures were, to be blunt, stolen from Shorpy.com.  I say 'stolen' because (a) they're copyrighted images duplicated onto a photo sharing site; (b) without any credit to Shorpy. 

The guys at Shorpy do great work finding these images (most are Library of Congress Public Domain), cleaning them up, and then posting them on their own website.  They deserve your clicks!   There's usually enough information with the photo to find it on the loc.gov website if you want to see the originals.  Shorpy also runs an edited set of comments on the images which often provide a lot of additional information.

dave

[Gordon Ferguson]

Gordon, do you realize how intimidating it is to us uneducated louts when somebody asks a casual question about an arcane subject and a forum member presents such an outstanding answer? -- Russ

Thanks Russ, just goes to show I can b*llsh*t with the best of them 

[Ray Dunakin]

Well, consider me educated.

Ditto! Fascinating info, thanks!

[chester]

Thanks Gordon, wow.

[chester]

Saw this at a truck show. Like the soft ground/mud wheels.

[Malachi Constant]

Those wheels look like something I'd make when "measure twice, cut once" slips my mind!  Of course, they've still got room to cut those pieces down a bit.    -- Dallas

[Chuck Doan]

There seems no end to the variety of attachments applied to the Fordson. Thanks Chester!

[marc_reusser]

Whoa!