Ceremonial ship launching
Ceremonial ship launching is the process of transferring a vessel to the water. It is a tradition in many cultures, dating back thousands of years. It has been observed as a celebration and a solemn blessing. The process involves many traditions intended to invite good luck, such as christening by breaking a bottle of champagne over the bow as the ship is named aloud. There are three methods of conveying a new ship from building site to water, only two of which are called launching. The oldest, most familiar, and most widely used is the launch, in which the vessel slides down an inclined slipway. With the side launch, the ship enters the water broadside and this method came into use in the 19th-century on inland waters and lakes, and was more widely adopted during World War II. The third method is float-out, used for ships that are built in basins or dry docks and floated by admitting water into the dock. In all cases, heavy chains are attached to the ship, ways are arranged perpendicular to the shore line and the ship is built with its stern facing the water.
The barricades support the two launch ways, the vessel is built upon temporary cribbing that is arranged to give access to the hulls outer bottom and to allow the launchways to be erected under the complete hull. When it is time to prepare for launching, a pair of standing ways is erected under the hull, the surface of the ways is greased. A pair of sliding ways is placed on top, under the hull, the weight of the hull is transferred from the build cribbing onto the launch cradle. On launching, the vessel slides backwards down the slipway on the ways until it floats by itself, some slipways are built so that the vessel is side-on to the water and is launched sideways. This is done where the limitations of the channel would not allow lengthwise launching. The Great Eastern designed by Brunel was built this way as were many landing craft during World War II and this method requires many more sets of ways to support the weight of the ship. Sometimes ships are launched using a series of inflated tubes underneath the hull and this procedure has the advantages of requiring less permanent infrastructure and cost.
The airbags provide support to the hull of the ship and aid its launching motion into the water and these airbags are usually cylindrical in shape with hemispherical heads at both ends. The Xiao Qinghe shipyard launched a tank barge with marine airbags on January 20,1981, egyptians and Romans called on their gods to protect seamen
Diesel engine
Diesel engines work by compressing only the air. This increases the air temperature inside the cylinder to such a degree that it ignites atomised diesel fuel that is injected into the combustion chamber. This contrasts with spark-ignition engines such as an engine or gas engine. In diesel engines, glow plugs may be used to aid starting in cold weather, or when the engine uses a lower compression-ratio, the original diesel engine operates on the constant pressure cycle of gradual combustion and produces no audible knock. Low-speed diesel engines can have an efficiency that exceeds 50%. Diesel engines may be designed as either two-stroke or four-stroke cycles and they were originally used as a more efficient replacement for stationary steam engines. Since the 1910s they have used in submarines and ships. Use in locomotives, heavy equipment and electricity generation plants followed later, in the 1930s, they slowly began to be used in a few automobiles. Since the 1970s, the use of engines in larger on-road and off-road vehicles in the US increased.
According to the British Society of Motor Manufacturing and Traders, the EU average for diesel cars accounts for 50% of the total sold, including 70% in France and 38% in the UK. The worlds largest diesel engine is currently a Wärtsilä-Sulzer RTA96-C Common Rail marine diesel, the definition of a Diesel engine to many has become an engine that uses compression ignition. To some it may be an engine that uses heavy fuel oil, to others an engine that does not use spark ignition. However the original cycle proposed by Rudolf Diesel in 1892 was a constant temperature cycle which would require higher compression than what is needed for compression ignition. Diesels idea was to compress the air so tightly that the temperature of the air would exceed that of combustion, to make this more clear, let it be assumed that the subsequent combustion shall take place at a temperature of 700°. Then in that case the pressure must be sixty-four atmospheres, or for 800° centigrade the pressure must be ninety atmospheres.
In years Diesel realized his original cycle would not work, Diesel describes the cycle in his 1895 patent application. Notice that there is no longer a mention of compression temperatures exceeding the temperature of combustion, now all that is mentioned is the compression must be high enough for ignition. In 1806 Claude and Nicéphore Niépce developed the first known internal combustion engine, the Pyréolophore fuel system used a blast of air provided by a bellows to atomize Lycopodium
MAN SE
MAN SE, formerly MAN AG, is a German mechanical engineering company and parent company of the MAN Group. MAN SE is based in Munich and its primary output is for the automotive industry, particularly heavy trucks. Further activities include the production of engines for various applications, like marine propulsion. MAN supplies trucks, diesel engines and turbomachinery, until September 2012 MAN SE was one of the top 30 companies listed on the German stock exchange. The company celebrated its 250th anniversary in 2008, in 2008, its 51,300 employees generated annual sales of around €15 billion in 120 different countries. The MAN Group currently operates its production output through three main subsidiaries, with each subsidiarys output destined for different locations, MAN Truck & Bus is one of Europes leading commercial vehicle manufacturers. MAN Diesel & Turbo is a leader in large diesel ship engines, stationary engines. MAN Latin America has a position in heavy trucks in Brazil. MAN traces its origins back to 1758, when the St.
Antony ironworks commenced operation in Oberhausen, as the first heavy-industry enterprise in the Ruhr region. In 1808, the three ironworks St. Antony, Gute Hoffnung, and Neue Essen merged, to form the Hüttengewerkschaft und Handlung Jacobi, which was renamed Gute Hoffnungshütte. In 1840, the German engineer Ludwig Sander founded in Augsburg the first predecessing enterprise of MAN in Southern Germany, reichenbachsche Maschinenfabrik, which was named after the pioneer of printing machines Carl August Reichenbach, and on the Maschinenfabrik Augsburg. The branch Süddeutsche Brückenbau A. G. was founded when the company in 1859 was awarded the contract for the construction of the bridge over the Rhine at Mainz. In 1898, the companies Maschinenbau-AG Nürnberg and Maschinenfabrik Augsburg AG merged to form Vereinigte Maschinenfabrik Augsburg und Maschinenbaugesellschaft Nürnberg A. G. Augsburg, in 1908, the company was renamed Maschinenfabrik Augsburg Nürnberg AG, or in short, M·A·N. While the focus remained on ore mining and iron production in the Ruhr region.
Under the direction of Heinrich von Buz, Maschinenfabrik Augsburg grew from a business of 400 employees into a major enterprise with a workforce of 12,000 by the year 1913. Locomotion and steel building were the big topics of this phase, the early predecessors of MAN were responsible for numerous technological innovations. The success of the early MAN entrepreneurs and engineers like Heinrich Gottfried Gerber, was based on a great openness towards new technologies. They constructed the Wuppertal monorail and the first spectacular steel bridges like the Großhesseloher Brücke in Munich in 1857, during 1921, the majority of M. A. N. was taken over by the Gutehoffnungshütte Actienverein für Bergbau und Hüttenbetrieb, Sterkrade
Torpedo tube
A torpedo tube is a cylinder shaped device for launching torpedoes. There are two types of torpedo tube, underwater tubes fitted to submarines and some surface ships. Thus a submarine torpedo tube operates on the principle of an airlock, the diagram on the right illustrates the operation of a submarine torpedo tube. The diagram is somewhat simplified but does show the working of a torpedo launch. A torpedo tube has a number of interlocks for safety reasons. For example, an interlock prevents the door and muzzle door from opening at the same time. The submarine torpedo launch sequence is, in simplified form, Open the breech door in the torpedo room, load the torpedo into the tube. Hook up the connection and the torpedo power cable. Shut and lock the breech door, turn on power to the torpedo. A minimum amount of time is required for torpedo warmup, fire control programs are uploaded to the torpedo. This may be manually or automatically, from sea or from tanks. The tube must be vented during this process to allow for complete filling, Open the equalizing valve to equalize pressure in the tube with ambient sea pressure.
If the tube is set up for Impulse Mode the slide valve will open with the muzzle door, if Swim Out Mode is selected, the slide valve remains closed. The slide valve allows water from the pump to enter the tube. Modern torpedoes have a safety mechanism that prevents activation of the torpedo unless the torpedo senses the required amount of G-force, the power cable is severed at launch. However, if a wire is used, it remains connected through a drum of wire in the tube. Torpedo propulsion systems vary but electric torpedoes swim out of the tube on their own and are of a smaller diameter,21 weapons with fuel-burning engines usually start outside of the tube. Once outside the tube the torpedo begins its run toward the target as programmed by the control system
Type XXI submarine
Type XXI U-boats, known as Elektroboote, were a class of German diesel-electric submarines designed during the Second World War. The submarines were produced prematurely, and all of those built had significant defects, as a result, only four of the submarines were completed during the war, and only two were sent for combat patrol and these were not used for actual combat. After the war, several navies obtained XXIs and operated them for decades in various roles and these include the Soviet Whiskey-class submarines, US Tang-class submarines, and the UK Porpoise-class submarines, all of which were based on the XXI design to some extent. The design remains the basis for diesel-electric submarines, the main features of the Type XXI were the hydrodynamically streamlined hull and conning tower, and the large number of battery cells, roughly triple that of the German Type VII submarine. This gave these boats great underwater range, and dramatically reduced the time spent on or near the surface and they could travel submerged at about 5 knots for two or three days before recharging batteries, which took less than five hours using the snorkel.
The Type XXI was much quieter than the VIIC, making it difficult to detect when submerged. The Type XXIs streamlined hull design allowed great submerged speed, the ability to outrun many surface ships while submerged, combined with improved dive times, made it much more difficult to chase and destroy. It gave the boat a sprint ability when positioning itself for an attack, older boats had to surface to sprint into position. This often revealed a location, especially after aircraft became available for convoy escort. The new hull design reduced visibility by marine or airborne radar when surfaced and they featured an electric torpedo-reloading system that allowed all six bow torpedo tubes to be reloaded faster than a Type VIIC could reload one tube. The Type XXI could fire 18 torpedoes in less than 20 minutes, the class featured a very sensitive passive sonar for the time, housed in the chin of the hull. The Type XXIs had better facilities than previous U-boat classes, between 1943 and 1945,118 boats were assembled by Blohm & Voss of Hamburg, AG Weser of Bremen, and Schichau-Werke of Danzig.
Each hull was constructed from eight prefabricated sections with final assembly at the shipyards, one of the reasons for these shortcomings was that sections were made by companies having little experience with shipbuilding, after a decision by Albert Speer. As a result, of 118 Type XXIs constructed, only four were fit for combat before the Second World War ended in Europe, of these, only two conducted combat patrols and neither sank any Allied ships. Construction of the pens was between 1943 and 1945, using about 10,000 concentration camp prisoners and prisoners of war as forced labour, the facility was 90% completed when, during March 1945, it was damaged badly by Allied bombing with Grand Slam earthquake bombs and abandoned. A few weeks later, the area was captured by the British Army, the FuMB Ant 3 Bali radar detector and antenna was located on top of the snorkel head. The Type XXI boats were fitted with the FuMO65 Hohentwiel U1 with the Type F432 D2 radar transmitter, U-2511 and U-3008 were the only Type XXIs to be used for war patrols, and neither sank any ships.
The commander of U-2511 claimed the U-boat had a British cruiser in her sights on 4 May when news of the German cease-fire was received and he further claimed she made a practice attack before leaving the scene undetected
Lightvessel
A lightvessel, or lightship, is a ship which acts as a lighthouse. They are used in waters that are too deep or otherwise unsuitable for lighthouse construction, the type has become largely obsolete, some stations were replaced by lighthouses as the construction techniques for the latter advanced, while others were replaced by large, automated buoys. A crucial element of design is the mounting of a light on a sufficiently tall mast. Initially, this consisted of oil lamps which could be run up the mast, vessels carried fixed lamps, which were serviced in place. Fresnel lenses were used as they became available, and many vessels housed these in small versions of the used on lighthouses. Some lightships had two masts, the holding a reserve beacon in case the main light failed. Initially, the hulls were constructed of wood, with lines like those of any other small merchant ship and this proved to be unsatisfactory for a ship that was permanently anchored, and the shape of the hull evolved to reduce rolling and pounding.
As iron and steel were used in ships, so were they used in lightvessels. Earlier vessels had to be towed to and from station, much of the rest of the ship was taken up by storage and crew accommodations. The primary duty of the crew was, of course, to maintain the light, but they record of passing ships, observed the weather. Tests conducted by Trinity House found that sound from a bell submerged some 18 feet could be heard at a distance of 15 miles, holding the vessel in position was an important aspect of lightvessel engineering. Early lightships used fluke anchors, which are still in use on many contemporary vessels and these were not very satisfactory, since a lightship has to remain stationary in very rough seas which other vessels can avoid, and these anchors are prone to dragging. Since the early 19th century, lightships have used mushroom anchors, named for their shape and they were invented by Robert Stevenson. The first lightvessel equipped with one was an 82-ton converted fishing boat, renamed Pharos, which entered service on 15 September 1807 near to Bell Rock, the effectiveness of these anchors improved dramatically in the 1820s, when cast iron anchor chains were introduced.
The designs varied, filled circles or globes, and pairs of inverted cones being the most common among them, a few ships had differently coloured hulls. For example, the Huron Lightship was painted black since she was assigned the black side of the entrance to the Lake Huron Cut. The lightvessel that operated at Minots Ledge, Mass. from 1854 until 1860 had a light yellow hull to make it visible against the blue-green seas, the earliest British lightship was placed in 1734, in The Nore near the mouth of the River Thames. Further vessels were placed off Norfolk in 1736, at Owers Bank in Sussex in 1788, in England and Wales, Trinity House is in charge of all lightvessels
Museum ship
A museum ship, called a memorial ship, is a ship that has been preserved and converted into a museum open to the public for educational or memorial purposes. Some are used for training and recruitment purposes, mostly for the number of museum ships that are still operational. Many, if not most, museum ships are associated with a maritime museum, only a few survive, sometimes because of historical significance, but more often due to luck and circumstance. The restoration and maintenance of museum ships presents problems for historians who are asked for advice, for instance, the rigging of sailing ships has almost never survived, and so the rigging plan must be reconstructed from various sources. Studying the ships allows historians to analyze how life on and operation of the ships took place, numerous scientific papers have been written on ship restoration and maintenance, and international conferences are held discussing the latest developments. Another consideration is the distinction between a museum ship, and a ship replica.
As repairs accumulate over time and less of the ship is of the materials. Visitors without historical background are often unable to distinguish between a historical museum ship and a ship replica, which may serve solely as a tourist attraction. Typically the visitor enters via gangplank, wanders around on the deck, goes below, usually using the original stairways, giving a sense of how the crew got around. The interior features restored but inactivated equipment, enhanced with mementos including old photographs, explanatory displays, pages from the logs, menus. Some add recorded sound effects, audio tours or video displays to enhance the experience, in some cases, the ships radio room has been brought back into use, with volunteers operating amateur radio equipment. Often, the callsign assigned is a variation on the identification of the ship. For example, the submarine USS Cobia, which had the call NBQV, is now on the air as NB9QV. The World War II submarine USS Pampanito, berthed at the San Francisco Maritime National Historical Park, had the wartime call NJVT and is now on the air as NJ6VT, in other cases, such as the USS Missouri, a distinctive call is used.
This radio work not only helps restore part of the vessel, a number of the larger museum ships have begun to offer hosting for weddings, other events, and sleepovers, and on a few ships still seaworthy, cruises. In the United States, this includes the USS Constitutions annual turnaround, a place on the deck is by invitation or lottery only, and highly prized. Many consider the appeal of an interesting old vessel on the city waterfront strong enough that any port city should showcase one or more museum ships. This may even include building a ship at great expense
Type 206 submarine
The Type 206 is a class of diesel-electric submarines developed by Howaldtswerke-Deutsche Werft. Its design is based on the preceding Type 205 submarine class and these small and agile submarines were built during the Cold War to operate in the shallow Baltic Sea and attack Warsaw Pact shipping in the event of military confrontation. The pressure hulls were built out of steel to counter the threat of magnetic naval mines. The low emission profile allowed the submarines in exercises to intrude even into well-protected opposing forces such as carrier formations with their screen, ten Type 205 submarines were constructed between 1962 and 1968 with hulls constructed of a new non-magnetic steel. Subsequently, the Type 206 was designed by Ingenieur Kontor Lübeck in 1964–65, of the 18 submarines built for the Bundesmarine,12 were modernized in the early 1990s and were re-designated as Type 206A, the others have been decommissioned. The current German Navy is starting to decommission some 206A vessels, in June 2010 the Ministry of Defence announced that all six remaining vessels were to be retired from active service immediately and to be decommissioned by the end of 2010 to cut costs.
There are no type 206 submarines left in service with the German Navy. Three such boats were built, the first being commissioned in 1976, when the Israeli navy received its new Dolphin-class submarines, the Gals were retired. As of 2006, one had been scrapped and two had sent to HDW in an attempt to find a buyer for them. When no buyer was found, one of the submarines was returned to Israel for display in the Clandestine Immigration, a major mid-life modernisation was conducted on twelve of these submarines, the boats concerned now being officially designated Type 206A. The ESM system has replaced and GPS navigation installed. The rebuilt submarines are armed with new torpedoes, and the system has been comprehensively refurbished. Notes, After its decommissioning, U21 had an ever-changing history and these plans were abandoned and U21 would have been scrapped in Itzehoe, had HDW not taken it on for a planned company museum in Kiel. This museum did not materialise, and U21 was gifted to the city of Eckernförde, for a short time it operated as a tourist attraction/technology museum, but because of local politics it was sold for scrap and broken up.
U13, U14, U19 and U20 were to be sold to Indonesia and their names would have been Nagarongsang, Nagabanda and Alugoro. February/March 2010 the U26, U28 and U30 were towed by Polish tug Ikar to s-Gravendeel, the Colombian Navy purchased four decommissioned Type 206A submarines to boost its submarine force. Two submarines, named Intrépido and Indomable were commissioned into the Colombian Navy on 28 August 2012, two submarines were acquired to be cannibalized for spare parts. On 5 December 2015, Intrépido and Indomable entered active service after a refit in Germany
Flensburg
Flensburg is an independent town in the north of the German state of Schleswig-Holstein. Flensburg is the centre of the region of Southern Schleswig, after Kiel and Lübeck it is the third largest town in Schleswig-Holstein. The regime was officially dissolved on 23 May, the nearest larger towns are Kiel and Odense in Denmark. Flensburgs city centre lies about 7 km from the Danish border, after Westerland on the island of Sylt it is Germanys northernmost town. Flensburg lies at the innermost tip of the Flensburg Fjord, an inlet of the Baltic Sea, Flensburgs eastern shore is part of the Angeln peninsula. The town of Flensburg is divided into 13 communities, which themselves are divided into 38 statistical areas. Constituent communities have a number and the statistical areas a three-digit number. In 1284, its rights were confirmed and the town quickly rose to become one of the most important in the Duchy of Schleswig. Unlike Holstein, Schleswig did not belong to the German Holy Roman Empire, Flensburg was not a member of the Hanseatic League, but it did maintain contacts with this important trading network.
They were sent inland and to almost every European country, on 28 October 1412, Queen Margaret I of Denmark died on board a ship in Flensburg Harbour of the Plague. From time to time such as bubonic plague, caused mainly by rat fleas, red dysentery. Lepers were strictly isolated, namely at the St. -Jürgen-Hospital, which lay far outside the towns gates, the church hospital Zum Heiligen Geist stood in Große Straße, now Flensburgs pedestrian precinct. A Flensburgers everyday life was hard, and the old roads. The main streets were neither paved nor lit at night, when they got really bad, the citizens had to make the dung-filled streets passable with wooden pathways. Only the few houses had windows. In 1485, a fire struck Flensburg. Even storm tides beset the town at times, every household in the town kept livestock in the house and the yard. Townsfolk furthermore had their own cowherds and a swineherd, after the Hanse fell in the 16th century, Flensburg was said to be one of the most important trading towns in the Scandinavian area
Supercharger
A supercharger is an air compressor that increases the pressure or density of air supplied to an internal combustion engine. This gives each intake cycle of the more oxygen, letting it burn more fuel and do more work. Power for the supercharger can be provided mechanically by means of a belt, shaft, when power is provided by a turbine powered by exhaust gas, a supercharger is known as a turbosupercharger – typically referred to simply as a turbocharger or just turbo. Common usage restricts the term supercharger to mechanically driven units, in 1848 or 1849 G. Jones of Birmingham, England brought out a Roots-style compressor. The worlds first functional, actually tested engine supercharger was made by Dugald Clerk, gottlieb Daimler received a German patent for supercharging an internal combustion engine in 1885. Louis Renault patented a centrifugal supercharger in France in 1902, an early supercharged race car was built by Lee Chadwick of Pottstown, Pennsylvania in 1908 which reportedly reached a speed of 100 mph.
The worlds first series-produced cars with superchargers were Mercedes 6/25/40 hp, both models were introduced in 1921 and had Roots superchargers. They were distinguished as Kompressor models, the origin of the Mercedes-Benz badging which continues today, on March 24,1878 Heinrich Krigar of Germany obtained patent #4121, patenting the first ever screw-type compressor. Later that same year on August 16 he obtained patent #7116 after modifying and improving his original designs and his designs show a two-lobe rotor assembly with each rotor having the same shape as the other. Although the design resembled the Roots style compressor, the screws were clearly shown with 180 degrees of twist along their length, the technology of the time was not sufficient to produce such a unit, and Heinrich made no further progress with the screw compressor. Nearly half a century later, in 1935, Alf Lysholm and he patented the method for machining the compressor rotors. There are two types of superchargers defined according to the method of gas transfer, positive displacement.
Positive displacement blowers and compressors deliver an almost constant level of pressure increase at all engine speeds, dynamic compressors do not deliver pressure at low speeds, above a threshold speed, pressure increases with engine speed. Positive-displacement pumps deliver a nearly fixed volume of air per revolution at all speeds, Roots superchargers are external compression only. External compression refers to pumps that transfer air at ambient pressure into the engine, if the engine is running under boost conditions, the pressure in the intake manifold is higher than that coming from the supercharger. That causes a backflow from the engine into the supercharger until the two reach equilibrium and it is the backflow that actually compresses the incoming gas. This is an inefficient process and the factor in the lack of efficiency of Roots superchargers when used at high boost levels. The lower the boost level the smaller is this loss, and Roots blowers are very efficient at moving air at low pressure differentials, all the other types have some degree of internal compression
West Germany
West Germany is the common English name for the Federal Republic of Germany or FRG in the period between its creation on 23 May 1949 to German reunification on 3 October 1990. During this Cold War era, NATO-aligned West Germany and Warsaw Pact-aligned East Germany were divided by the Inner German border, after 1961 West Berlin was physically separated from East Berlin as well as from East Germany by the Berlin Wall. This situation ended when East Germany was dissolved and its five states joined the ten states of the Federal Republic of Germany along with the reunified city-state of Berlin. With the reunification of West and East Germany, the Federal Republic of Germany, enlarged now to sixteen states and this period is referred to as the Bonn Republic by historians, alluding to the interwar Weimar Republic and the post-reunification Berlin Republic. The Federal Republic of Germany was established from eleven states formed in the three Allied Zones of occupation held by the United States, the United Kingdom and France, US and British forces remained in the country throughout the Cold War.
Its population grew from roughly 51 million in 1950 to more than 63 million in 1990, the city of Bonn was its de facto capital city. The fourth Allied occupation zone was held by the Soviet Union, as a result, West Germany had a territory about half the size of the interbellum democratic Weimar Republic. At the onset of the Cold War, Europe was divided among the Western and Eastern blocs, Germany was de facto divided into two countries and two special territories, the Saarland and divided Berlin. The Federal Republic of Germany claimed a mandate for all of Germany. It took the line that the GDR was an illegally constituted puppet state, though the GDR did hold regular elections, these were not free and fair. For all practical purposes the GDR was a Soviet puppet state, from the West German perspective the GDR was therefore illegitimate. Three southwestern states of West Germany merged to form Baden-Württemberg in 1952, in addition to the resulting ten states, West Berlin was considered an unofficial de facto 11th state.
It recognised the GDR as a de facto government within a single German nation that in turn was represented de jure by the West German state alone. From 1973 onward, East Germany recognised the existence of two German countries de jure, and the West as both de facto and de jure foreign country, the Federal Republic and the GDR agreed that neither of them could speak in the name of the other. The first chancellor Konrad Adenauer, who remained in office until 1963, had worked for an alignment with NATO rather than neutrality. He not only secured a membership in NATO but was a proponent of agreements that developed into the present-day European Union, when the G6 was established in 1975, there was no question whether the Federal Republic of Germany would be a member as well. With the collapse of communism in Central and Eastern Europe in 1989, symbolised by the opening of the Berlin Wall, East Germany voted to dissolve itself and accede to the Federal Republic in 1990. Its five post-war states were reconstituted along with the reunited Berlin and they formally joined the Federal Republic on 3 October 1990, raising the number of states from 10 to 16, ending the division of Germany
Nazi Germany
West Germany
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Media related to German submarine Wilhelm Bauer at Wikimedia Commons
