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Today, I begin collection data on the Spruance class destroyer.  This is a very interesting ship to me because it's focus was ASW warfare, it was very good at it's job, but it was extremely large for the time and had other faults.

This one will take a while to get right.  Call for research team ~FEB 10th. ETA end of month.

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Anonymous

I can see the images

Anonymous

Working for me :)

Anonymous

Boaty McBoatface

Anonymous

working for me too

Anonymous

The 3rd image is tiny, but the others are fine otherwise.

Joseph Orr

Checks 4.0

Anonymous

Fantastic - I want to research the DD-963 class destroyers. Will the brief cover only the Spruance class ships, or also the derivative Kidd and Ticonderoga classes?

Anonymous

Is this the ship that’s behind James Earl Jones on his desk in The Hunt for the Red October?

Anonymous

Interesting. I built the gearcases for those ships at Westinghouse Marine Division in Sunnyvale. 4 gas turbines into two gearcases .. 80,000 horsepower. We made them so quiet, that the Navy didn't believe it, until they came out and visited our humongous anechoic testing chamber. There is (or was) one left, which had been converted to remote control, which was mimicked in an episode of "The Last Ship", using a remotely controlled 'Chinese' destroyer to fool the bad guys. Hollywood imitating reality. As I recall, there were serious construction delays, due to Lockheed having very serious skilled trade-persons turnover of 60% per annum. We had to totally disassembly a lot of the gearboxes, kosmoline, and fill with dry nitrogen for storage. I seem to recall someone saying that it was costing Lockheed $13K a month per box, for storage fees. That's $13K in 1974 dollars. We also made the boxes for LHA's and the "Thresher" drivetrain replication. Challenging and rewarding work.

Anonymous

I have found a 1976 article on gear units for naval gas turbines. The author is British; perhaps some technology is different from that in American shipyards. The article is here: https://asmedigitalcollection.asme.org/GT/proceedings-pdf/GT1976/79740/V01AT01A026/2391700/v01at01a026-76-gt-26.pdf

Anonymous

It does have a paragraph on the Spruance class installation.

Anonymous

Sprucans were DD not DDG

Anonymous

I served on DD 987 Obannon as QM3 any questions I might be able to help.