What broke down in the Marconi room?

[Steven Christian]

Ok this will be my last off topic post on the Marconi Room. Channel 19 has always been the truckers channel. Beside smokie reports there is some good info on that channel like road conditions up ahead. Especially valuable the rare times when the interstate ices up. Treasure Island...I knew it pretty well. When I was assigned temp duty to the M.A.A. I used to have to take prisoners from the ship to stand their Court Martial's there. It was the Navy's legal center for the area. I did not like that duty at all but you do what they tell you. I understand the Navy sold T.I. to San Fransisco a few years back along with a lot of other naval facilities... Alameda N.A.S. ect. Alameda was my ships home port. I don't think the bay area has anything left to handle the big ships but I don't know for sure.

On Topic: Yes it was good they had tech knowledge to repair it. I know they were supposed to wait for the repair techs but do you or anyone know if the Titanic and or other ships carried a supply of spare parts for the radio? Or if that became standard after the disaster?

 

[Robert T. Paige]

Good question, Steven-

On Topic :

I've never seen any mention of spare parts for the Marconi equipment.......Only descrptions of the on board equipment .
It may have been since only the Marconi repair specialists were supposed to work on the equipment, no spare parts were stored on the ship.
Philips and Bride may have had to improvise.

Did they have any machine shops or other facilities for making repairs, such as gears or mechanical parts on those ships as the Titanic ? Did they have any equivalents to Machinist Mates on those ships ?

I know they didn't really have a Tailor Shop on Titanic. (Re : "Titanic" (1953 Movie) . Richard in his dinner jacket and Norman's long trousers. LOL

Off Topic again. I will try to make these my last :

On the ship on which I served, there was a special storage room (were they called "compartments" ?) which was reserved only for the storage of electronics spare parts, especially those special parts for each individual piece of equipment, whether it was a magnetron or a special tube for the radar or an antenna current meter for a radio transmitter in addition to all the tubes, resistors, capacitors, etc. Taking inventory of them at regular intervals was another part of the ET's job. :-(

This was also the home for our clandestine dark room. LOL.

Just one more comment on Treasure Island. The Administration Building (The would have been Airport Terminal Building ) is shown briefly in the movie "The Caine Mutiny" (1954) as rhe site of the Court Martial trial . It is also in another one of the Harrison Ford movies as the Berlin Templehof Terminal Building.

I liked my duty on T.I. for two main reasons. LOL.
(1) They had a Locker Club and you could wear your "civvies" on Liberty. I had a locker full of brown slacks, brown sweaters, brown jacket, brown loafers , etc. No Navy Blue.
(2) Most of the books in ET School were "Classified Material" and you didn't have any home work since you couldn't take them out of the class room or the lab.

North Island NAS in San Diego was our ship's home port. 6 months there ; 6 months in Iwakuni, Japan. (With transit time to and from in between) September to March in San Diego. March to September in Iwakuni.

And finally. CB is not all bad if used legally..

 

[Steven Christian]

I found this poking around the site:
“Olympic's Engineers' Workshop was outfitted with a large lathe, milling machine, drilling press, grindstone and emery wheel which were operated from an overhead shaft via belts driven by a 7½-BHP electric motor supplied by W. H. Allen; Titanic's would have no doubt been the same. That's as much as I have been able to uncover -- no specifics as to manufacturer, specifics as to actual size/capacity of the lathe, etc. …

its in this thread: Machine Tools

I was looking at various schematics of the radio equipment. What struck me as odd was the lack of fuses on the components. They had disconnect switches but very little circuit protection. I would think the one circuit I did see fuses (the main DC feeder) on one schematic that they probably had spare fuses at least for that.

 

[Robert T. Paige]

I promised no more, but I couldn't resist this one.:
One of the class mates was one of the early dropouts at ET School in the USN..
He was eventually assigned to the cargo ship USS TITANIA (AK-13)
Sounds like a "double-whammy"
Almost "Titanic" and the number "13".
LOL

Cheers !
Robert

 

[Steven Christian]

Yeah sounds like double jeopardy. You ET's had a long A school. Mine was only like 12 weeks plus 2 week for basic electronics then Aircraft fire fighting school and then Magazine/ordnance fire fighting school (which was basically flood the space and run like hell). But keeping on topic do you or anyone know how long a an apprenticeship was for say a ships company electrician during the time of Titanic...2-3 years...or longer? During my career I went through 2 apprenticeships...3 years for Electrician and 3 1/2 years for Instrument and Control tech. I'm curious as to how long theirs were.

 

[thalasur]

So many wireless stations, both land-based and sea-borne, professional and amateur, began buzzing with news of the disaster on the morning of the 15th that it's impossible to track the path that the news took to the public.

 

[thalasur]

So many wireless stations, both land-based and sea-borne, professional and amateur, began buzzing with news of the disaster on the morning of the 15th that it's impossible to track the path that the news took to the public.

Ships relayed information, land stations picked them up and passed them along.
guest survey Restaurant Survey

 

[Mike Spooner]

What broke down in the Marconi room? Well actually nothing! Reading Jack Phillips little biography book from his home town Godalming/Farncombe. Surrey UK. It mention after over six hours he identify the fault that the leads inside of the transformer had burnt through causing a short circuit. His tool to fix the problem was a roll of insulating tape!