How to light the Battleship's boiler

Eason recommission crew eb03

Was in eb03 recommission crew great times

I stood watch in all the firerooms when i was aboard from 88 to decommissioning. This is a very simplified video on lighting fires in the boiler. A lot of the time burner nozzle orifice tips were changed with the burner still hot. This was done to increase the fuel flow to the fire, as there was no pump control. The pump was on or off. The bigger the hole in the orifice the faster steam was created, usually at higher speeds while maneuvering.

Could they build boilers like that today

I wish that I was old enough to have served on an Iowa class

Keep up the good work Ryan. I am a ww2 buff and I think this stuff is very interesting. By the way, what are those 2 empty gun mounts down the boardwalk at Port salute? Keep the videos coming.

I got to light a Fram 2 destroyer, same technique.

Best cover your ears!

You need to check your volume and ensure its the same level for each show. It’s quite varied and in some cases difficult to hear even at 100% on my devices (multiple)

This is important information I need to kinow in case there is ever an alien invasion.

What types of fuel did they use? Did they have provisions to use the heavier grades of oil.
My father was an engineman in the Coast Guard in the 60's and had a lot of knowledge and experience with oil fired boilers, he said that "bunker oil" was used on many vessels, it was very thick and steam was actually injected into the tanks to heat and thin it so that it could be pumped and properly atomized , I'd imagine that if the boilers were cold they would be started on diesel and then switched to the heavier oil once enough steam was available to preheat the fuel.

Wear gloves to light off the boiler? Someone must have taken home those gloves home from our ship? Ha Ha
Yes, the burner barrels are hot when they come out. But, I had to break them down hot and clean the nozzles. I'd drop the nozzles in a small container for JP 5, which would cool them off and then scrape them clean with a scraper. Once cleaned, reassemble the burner barrel for the next guy on watch.
Barry

Lastly, all the lagging that covered all the equipment was removed from every naval vessel that had asbestos fibers in them.

Check out USS Aircraft Hornet

Well Done!

The procedure to light up a power plant is due to the remote control of the burners to begin with :
start one boiler run for lets say 20 s, 3 s before stop start the next one, switch of the first and then continue with the other 8 and back to one. Continue. Wait for the water to start to heat up . At 60 celsius, longer heating periods. Continue

Think about this: cold water ... you will take the boiler from 10 celsius to 260 celsius.
By that time it will be about 3 cm longer.

Think about the stress.

The cloth stick isn't necessary as soon as the brick inside the firebox becomes pleasantly hot - the oil will light up immediately.
It is awfully important that the oil starts to burn immediately - failure lighting .... cut the oil immediately.

So its basically, lighting a stick on fire and inserting it in the burners?

My last ship was steam powered, but being a 'Top Sider' working up in the island I never had to learn how the pressure cookers worked other than the basic cycle. I much prefer gas turbines. You start those by spinning them up with high pressure air, inject atomized diesel and hit the 'sparker.' Cold iron to full power in less than two minutes while the steam plant needed hours to do the same.

In normal operations while cruising the gas turbine ship sounds like a 747 taxiing, if you advance the throttles to where she sounds like a 747 ready for takeoff you are at Flank power and the skipper can go water skiing.

Yankee Station, 1972- I had an unwelcome occasion to light off the back wall of a superheatrer on my tin can. We were engaged in a fire mission when the burnerman shifted to a clogged burner and secured the operative one. I eased open the fuel to the known good one and got that "whump"accompanied by the front jumping in and out, I would not have tried this with distillate fuel, but we were burning NSFO- and time was of the essence- loss of fires was a rare and worst case scenario during combat, and could be likened to a flame-out and midair restart for a jet aircraft. Did not report that event to Main Control nor logged it either BTW.

Worlds tightest pants goes too...

I wonder if I understand the part about changing the nozzles. Does that mean that if you are going all ahead slow and find yourself in a combat situation, all of the nozzles on all the boilers have to be changed out? Or is it a smoother process like high flow for getting the boilers boiling and then switching to a smaller nozzle to maintain the heat?

Crazy to think about how you pretty much start a Battleship with a Zippo.

Suckers. Changed enough sprayers (5Y515360) on HMCS Protecteur to know what to do...They do come out HOT, but not so bad really- 2 pairs of steaming gloves was enough with ours. Mind, ours were steam atomised sprayers (hence why 5-Y-51-53-60= 5 jet, Y type jet, #51 on the outside hole, 53 on the FFO hole, 60 on the steam jet). To clean sprayers: not more than 95 RPM (5/6 fires...). Call bridge, let them know no 1 double bubble (100+ RPM). Watertender goes down below, starts with the 3 spares. Blows them through, checks for an even flow of air from both the steam and fuel jets on all 5. That gives you 3/6 needed clean already. Check the O Rings on the Iowa type racer sprayer. (yes, that's what they were called). 2x teflon rings provided the seal on steam and fuel to sprayer. Get out gloves (x2 for Left Hand). Boiler Op then sets up to 1 fire in burner OFF position in MCR. Collect 5 gal pail to minimise fuel spillage. Confirm with Boiler Op that the burner is in OFF. Shut root valves (fuel/Steam). Undo retainer using wheel hook, while holding bucket under the end so that most of the fuel goes into bucket. If the sprayer doesn't come free when released, use wheel hook to "tweek" sprayer back and forth, till it is loose. Then, put bucket on deck, grab sprayer back with right hand (1 glove), slide sprayer out about 2', grab with left hand on barrel, then swiftly take sprayer to the bench, drop into holder like ^. Try not to drop on deck due to heat on way across...

Take clean sprayer out of rack, walk back over to boiler (which has 2" hole in it open...with 20" of hot air coming out it...) put sprayer in, ensure lined up, put retainer back in place, hand tighten. Make sure that microswitch for sprayer in is made.

Now, comes hairy part- testing "new" sprayer...open root valves. Call boiler op on either radio or machinery broadcast. If on broadcast, stand at boiler room console- if you had radio, go to same spot or so... They then set boiler to be able to change over fires to the one you put in. If it all works out (about 80%), then no big deal. If it goes wrong, usually it's the flaps are sticky, and you have to go wack the flaps in with a wrench. Or, you can get it quite wrong, not have enough pressure on the retainer, and have a giant fuel & steam sprinkler spray F76 all over the front of the boiler...:"take it out take it out take it out..."

Now, do the other 2 the same way...so there are 3 dirty sprayers on the bench, and 3 clean ones in the boiler. Each sprayer when clean will burn about 2500 lb/hr of F76 (Diesel, or close enough). We needed 2 of them to make up to 60 RPM, 4 for 60-90, 5 for 95, and all 6 for 100>. You could change sprayers at 100, but it was a faffle for sure....if it went wrong, you didn't have long as boiler op before steam pressure would be dropping, the Electrician would be mad because Cycles, the EOOW would be mad because not enough steam...but we did do it.

Dirty sprayers- the best was when we had enough spare tips to be able to change them right out, then put them into the ultrasonic cleaner bath. However, someone in their infinite wisdom chose not to order more tips in about 2008...I lost my nice new tip from home to the ship, because we needed it more at work than I needed one at home. Prior to that, in 2007, we had horrible problems with MBG in our fuel. Turns out, there was about 7' of MBG in the fuel tank...who'd have thought that caused quite the problems even with the smallest hole being #53 that the fuel was passing through !. It was bad enough that we were typically cleaning tips every 2 watches which gets OLD fast... !

This is on an "automatic" boiler- you shouldn't need to do anything but turn the switch for the fire to light, or to extinguish the fire. Fuel pressure was supposed to control atomizing steam pressure (but never did, we just steamed with it set at 150 PSI atomizing steam always), and we used about 40 lb/hr/tip in water to provide the atomization. Fuel pressure was regulated by a Bailey Meter Company computer, using steam flow, steam pressure & fuel flow to regulate steam pressure- it was fairly good, in that you could manouver 40-90-0-40 and only have to put in and take out fires to do so. (you had to have a little bit of fearlessness to do so, as it was possible to lift safety valves, which is a beer offence- remember, RCN was wet until after PRO burned...).

And no, we didn't need a flaming stick to light them- we had a spark system that did so- burner on ignition on got you 7 seconds of ignitor, and you had the fireeye system to verify that the fire actually lit. I never lit the ships boilers with a flaming stick, though it was suggested the best way to do so was a propane torch with a length of about 3' of copper tubing...

At what point does all that stuff start turning the propellers?

Ryan, do you think some Navy admin somewhere saw this video, and was ready to launch a harpoon at the museum because you nearly touched the steam system? I'm joking of course, Merry Christmas to you and everyone at the museum!

My dad worked in the boiler room in 54 on DD869 USS Arnold J Isbell. Only thing I remember that he told me about this ship was, that he can up out of a hatch once and did not know they were about to fire the 5in, when they fired, he said it knocked him back down. I was a FO in the Army, so being around 81,4 deuce,105,155 and 8in for a short time...I can see that depending on your location. LOL just thinking out loud.

This information is going to be handy when your going to perform a grand theft on a battleship with 3 of your homies.

What was a Barn Door exercise?

thanks for putting the pop up at the end to block the important part of the video.

What is the difference between saturated steam and dry steam?

START IT UP

They gave this job to one man?

That is way more scary than the way I used to start up the steam plant... by pulling control rods out of a reactor...

Disappointed to learn that your ship's store doesn't sell asbestos gloves to go along with a Zippo.

the overlay block the important part

Is the white “E” on the boiler front a display of the ship’s engineering excellence award? If so, the proper color of the engineering “E” is red, not white. Each consecutive engineering “E” rates a red “hash mark” beneath the red “E.” With five consecutive engineering excellence awards, the red “E” and three red “hash marks” are painted out and replaced by a single gold “E.” Good looking boiler front! BZ!

Wait what
Steam ships are still made?

Are there any major components missing that would prevent the boilers from being lit and getting the ship under her own power?

Seen more on the movie Battle Ship on lighting the boilers. Would've been better if you added volume of fuel per burner. Additionally you spoke of two different types of steam but didn't say why two types are used. But the saving grace is your other videos, very informative.

When could you get a full head of steam

I think my friends 440 GTX uses carb jets about that size. 😋

Give us a demo Ryan! Lol

I have fired the boilers many times. Burner man was the first thing you learn in the boiler room. DDG 18- 71-75

Very old boiler design without pilot burner and electric igniter :-). Modern boilers can to be started by one mouse click on computerised control station :-).

Taught BT/MM "A" School from 89-93, good vid.

Why don't you just take the ship for a joy cruise if you know how to run it? 😅

If you want to know exactly how to light off and steam those B&W "M" type boilers I highly suggest you enlist the assistance of an Iowa Class BB qualified Boiler Technician to walk you through it if you don't want to blow yourself up in the process.
I would not listen to this faker telling me how to lace my shoes.