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October 22nd 04, 11:54 AM

In article ,
(Brian Kelly) writes:

(N2EY) wrote in message
...
In article ,
(Brian Kelly) writes:

The fundamental problem was that they were going too fast for the
conditions.
That's an operational mistake, not an engineering mistake.

No, it was first and foremost an engineering screwup, if the rudder
had been properly sized the ship would have turned harder/quicker at
any speed and would have missed the iceberg. Particularly since the
collision was only a sideswipe.

*Maybe* Murdock had to reverse rudder so the stern wouldn't hit the berg too.

Titanic was "state of the art" for its time.

So were the World Trade Center towers which were designed to survive
if an airliner plowed into them. But the engineers who designed the
towers didn't factor in the fact that airliners are not just
structural impact loads, the carry fuel too. Oops.

So their collapse was fundamentally an engineering screwup?

Other ships of that era with properly designed rudders would have
turned away from the berg and missed it with room to spare.

Perhaps if the rudder had been larger, the Titanic might have turned
away
quicker and missed the berg. But that's really irrelevant.
The ship was clearly
going too fast for conditions.

There's no "might have beens" about it. Unless you can explain why a
larger rudder wouldn't have turned the Titanic quicker so that it
missed the berg.

Simple. In a ship like Titanic, putting the rudder over isn't like steering
the front wheels of a car. In landlubber terms . . .

Save it for the landlubbers.

massive snip

You've snipped the part where I prove my points, of course.

By the way, ya want the list of ships I've been on during sinuous
coursing anti-submarine drills at 30+ kts? Ever stand on the deck of a
ship which is bigger the Titanic doing multiple banked s-turns turns
at combat power speeds? There's some "rudder ops" which will get ya
yer sea legs real quick . . .

Big deal. Were you driving the things? Did they do the tests with a hull,
rudder and propulsion system identical to Titanic's? Didn't think so.

Titanic and sisters were primarily designed to be liners, not military ships.
Sister Olympic not only evaded a torpedo attack in WW1, but chased down, rammed
and sank the attacking submarine. Kinda says something about rudder size and
manueverability...

Now answer my question and thankew.

Simple:

Suppose you're driving a car in conditions where your range of vision is 200
feet. And suppose it takes that car 10 feet to stop for every 10 mph of speed.

How fast do you drive the car under those conditions? If you go 50 mph and hit
something, is that an engineering screwup? Or is it a simple case of going too
fast for conditions?

I say it's simply going too fast. Better brakes, better headlights, etc., might
permit higher safe speeds, but if they're not in use, it's fundamentally the
driver's responsibility to operate at a speed safe for the conditions
encountered.

73 de Jim, N2EY