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#11
October 22nd 04, 10:28 PM
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Mike Coslo wrote in message ...
N2EY wrote: 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. Hey kids! Trying to blame the loss of the Titanic on the rudder, while certainly an interesting point, is only one point. The rudder was what the rudder was. It functioned as well as it could, which was no well enough. That is a different matter. Yep. If I roll down the street in a loaded 18 wheeler at 100 plus miles per hour, and try to stop within 300 feet - it will not happen. The brakes are simply not up to the task. Does this mean that the brakes are poorly designed or defective? Not even. I was operating my 18 wheeler way outside it's design parameters. Which does not mean there's anything wrong with your 18 wheeler, either, except for the loose nut holding the steering wheel....;-). Did the pilot and Captain not know the handling characteristics of the ship? They should have. There was no pilot. Most of the officers were transferred as a unit from Olympic, which was Titanic's older and slightly shorter sister. Captain Smith was Olympic's captain before Titanic, and was certainly familiar with her characteristics. He was routinely assigned to the newest White Star ships to essentially "write the book" on them. In fact, Smith was the senior captain of the whole White Star line, and was supposed to retire before April 1912. He was persuaded by Ismay to do just one more round trip, closing out his career with the first voyage of Titanic. Frankly that BBC story smacked of the "Everything you think you know is wrong" sort of tale. The guy that was the hero is actually the coward, and the guy they called the coward was actually the hero, blah, blah, blah.... Some new data has come to light since the wreck was found. For example, it was not known with certainty before that the ship broke in two. The brittleness of the steel, particularly the rivets, was documented from actual samples. If the Titanic had not been simply scaled up from smaller designs, it probably would have been a better ship. OTOH, tried-and-proven methods are not abandoned lightly. If the metal was better, it would have probably not suffered the extent of damage, If the ships compartments not been *open at the top*, it wouldn't have had a cascading effect of water going over the top of one compartment, then starting to flood the next compartment, tilting the ship more, and exacerbating the problem until the water filled all the compartments and it sunk. Watertight doors at the bottom meant nothing when the water just went over the top. Yep. Odd that in all the arguments, that one is overlooked. No, it isn't. See below. I would postulate that the number one reason that the Titanic sunk at all is that the compartments had the open top design. Were they sealed, the Ship would probably just taken on a major list, and ridden low in the water. But almost all the people would have survived. A "sealed top" design would be impractical - and completely unnecessary. It was known soon after the disaster that if the watertight bulkheads (transverse walls between compartments) were just *one deck* higher, the overflow would not have occurred. But the bulkheads did not go one deck higher. 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. Sounds like fun as long as it is a drill! ;^) Sure! 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. HAR! I didn't read the whole letter before replying, and see that you used a similar example! It's exactly the same principle is why. They were outdriving their vision, which is suicide in any mode of transport that depends on seeing what's ahead. The rudder was sufficient to maneuver the ship at a certain rate at a certain speed. Was the Titanic not very maneuverable? Possibly. Is an 18 wheeler as maneuverable as a 'Vette? Not hardly. But if the 18 wheeler tries to head down a winding mountain road at the same speeds the "Vette can, and it crashes, it isn't the designer's fault. Exactly! The designer was aboard Titanic, and went down with her. If you haven't seen it, I highly recommend the book and film "A Night To Remember". 73 de Jim, N2EY |
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