Naval Logistics - Where does the food, fuel and ammo go?

Today we take a look at exactly where a battleship would store its various supplies and how these can actually contribute to a ships defense or potentially its vulnerability.

[VintageCarHistory]

The forward storeroom was a lot of fun once empty after a deployment. A big empty space that, in heavy seas, pitched quite a bit. So, when on the crest of a wave, you jump and the deck falls away below you. The goal is to get maximum airtime without breaking a leg.

[cliffcliffdafif]

Can we please please please please get more videos like this covering the rest of the ship?!??!? Crew quarters, machine spaces, workshops, etc. I would particularly be interested in breaking down the use of space in the superstructure.

[andersed]

Acids are mostly for cleaning.

Those really deep store rooms are probably “treasure rooms”. Everybody, every unit, and every ship has a junk drawer. All sorts of interesting things are squirreled away for just in case. Mostly off the books.

My aviation maintenance unit had enough off the books IC for an entire spare F-18. Highly illegal, security risk and all that, but when the call comes down to get all the planes up for deployment NOW, not having to go through supply for parts for a short period shortenes the turnaround time drastically, and that makes the officers look really good, so they don’t look to hard…

[jamesgates]

When you think about it Food is food for the sailors. Ammo is food for the guns. Fuel is food for the engines. And Parts are food for the machines. It's all just food.

[robertadamcik]

Hey Drach! This is Bob, your guide during your visit to WISCONSIN. I just check our DC Plates, and that AV Gas storeroom was converted to the JP -5 pump room and storage tanks. Later!

[crazyguy]

21:44 For the gasoline tanks I can't speak for Wisconsin but New Jersey currently has 2 in that space used to store the JP5 for helicopters. At some point a bulkhead was ran fore-aft and split the room, leaving the 2 tanks on the port side. Ryan and Libby put a video out on it a few years ago, the 1984 plans show that space, 7-204-2-E

[Niftynorm]

The mysteries of the 'storekeepers' were not answered on our ship until we decommissioned the ship. Found many 'missing/never received' medical supplies buried in the wrong store rooms/spaces! Fortunately unscrupulous crew members didn't discover the large quantity of missing narcotics! Never a dull moment in the USN. LOL Also to access the less frequently used store rooms you needed to notify the Gas Free Engineer to ensure the space was safe to enter.

[genericpersonx]

Seeing those diagrams brings back some memories. My Grandmother's main job during WW2 was drafting. She and her many colleagues basically scaled up and down drawings for industrial and military purposes. She'd take a massive blueprint covering a large table and redraw them to fit smaller sheets or blow up a small image into something that could cover a large table.

Her abiding memory of that time revolved around the way the office was arranged:

The ladies were mostly kept upstairs while the men worked downstairs. The ladies, being ladies, had the privilege of having the office's sole heater (for coffee and warmth) while the men downstairs just endured the chill and were supposed to come up the stairs to get their own coffee.

Being wonderfully kind ladies, they took to heating pennies on the heater until searing hot and flinging them downstairs to see who'd pick them up.

The ladies, being actually wonderfully kind ladies, regularly brought down hot coffee instead of forcing the men to come upstairs to get their own.

It was a good arrangement and they got a LOT of work done despite the burned fingers.

[OtakuLoki]

A point about the multiplicity of water tanks: You don't want to be filling the same tanks that you're drawing water from. for any particular service. While it's possible, you'd prefer to be able to test the water in a tank before putting that tank into service. So, ideally, you'll have at least three tanks for a given use: One ready for use, one being filled from the distillation plants, and one supplying the load. Then compound this by the number of active distillation plants aboard ship: My ship had two enginerooms, each with an independent distillation plant, that could nominally supply a large fraction of the design water needs of the ship - and in practice could meet the needs of the ship by itself, if we went to strict water rationing. I'm guessing that an Iowa would have at least a distillation plant per engineroom. Though those may have been less efficient than the ones we had aboard a later era ship. Each distillation plant/engineroom would have it's own dedicated potable water tanks; and it's own dedicated boiler/engineering feed water tanks.

Furthermore, since the quality of the water your distillation plant is going to vary based upon whether the intent is to produce feed water or pot water, your distillation plant can only produce one or the other.

[Rdeboer]

I remember reading that two thousand eggs were cooked every morning aboard _Princess Royal_ alone, and another thousand in the evening. The Grand Fleet must have consumed an enormous quantity of eggs per year.

[michaelsullo]

S.D Storage includes common spare parts, organizational clothing (winter gear, boots, combat gear), bedding, office supplies, and other supplies that other departments do not have the space for. As you may or may not realize, a significant portion of the of the S.D. Storage contains toilet paper.

[khaelamensha]

Being French, I did cancel my meetings when I read food in the title 😂... Now I am waiting the chapter about wine and cheese cellar, for garlic, hams, they are obviously kept in the boiler room where depending on the period they will have this great smoked flavor or a more exotic fuel one 😂

[KJs]

After a while serving on ships, you take everything on them for granted, but there really is a lot of integration and careful thought that goes into how everything fits together.

I thought (seeing people seem to be interested in how ships work) I might share some thoughts on what does what. If people aren't interested, I can delete. If you are an ex Jack/matelot, scroll past, because all the below will be "suck eggs".

I spent 40 years in my Navy (RAN) and early on the ships were mostly of Brit origin/design. I did 20 of those years at sea, and the oldest ships I served on were our Darings (3 postings to two of them) and our DE's (type 12 derived, served in 5 of the 6, double postings to two of them. Later I served in two of the Anzacs, but sea rode all ten.

Now while the oldest ships I went to sea in were the Darings, my first job out of Navy apprentice school was refit work on our carrier "Melbourne" (in 1975) which was of WW2 light carrier design. Working on ships in refit, you get to go into compartments that you normally wouldn't, and seeing we were overhauling all the damage control cables, we had to go EVERYWHERE. The plans and blueprints were all WW2 vintage, and the range of compartments and nooks and crannies was just amazing.

When you join up you do subjects like NBCD (Nuclear biological chemical defence) and "service knowledge". Service knowledge tells you gems like (that I still remember 50 years later) "potato lockers MUST be outside as large numbers of potatoes give off poisonous gases" (what the?) and "the ventilation of supply/extraction in heads and showers is biased toward extraction" (so steam/moisture and stink STAY in those compartments, as open doors have a flow of air from passgeways INTO those compartments.

While ventilation you would think is basic, you have air cond, non air cond, and ventilation is tiered so that it flows (generally) from manned to unmanned. Then there is ventilation for magazines, pyro and lachrymetry lockers, and ventilation for fume generating areas (ie paint store.) Then (on some ships like the Darings) you have pressurised boiler rooms (open face boilers) that have to be kept at a certain positive pressure/enter and leave through an airlock. THEN there is the NBC citadel, and that has to have total ventilation recirc for operation through Nuclear fallout, and cleansing stations, where crews can go out onto the uppers to monitor radaition, and then re-enter the ship without contaminating the ship. And also have to carry enough NBC suits (charcoal impregnated), AND have to have pre-wetting (entire upper deck has sprinklers/sprayers to wash away nuclear fallout/dust.) That was during the cold war, we don't do it/not built in anymore. But as I joined in 73 when that was still a key issue, we had all that drummed into us.

Then you have the stores. Dry stores, cold stores, fridges, freezers, fridge flats, victualling stores, engineering stores, lay apart stores, even the "Captains pantry store" and the canteen store.

The water making and ability to carry is a priority as well. New ships have RO (reverse osmosis) units to make as much water as they like. All my time in Anzacs, never had to worry about water. But still had the "90 second shower" that was ingrained. Get in, get wet. Water off. Soap up, water on, wash off. You usually didn't turn the water off at peak times, as you'd all just rotate. Water on, get wet, get out, another bloke gets in while you soap up, once he's wet, you're ready to rinse off. Type 12's had individual shower cubicles, but Darings had a long trough with 3 shower heads above that - for about 100 blokes. So you HAD to rotate/share. Steam ships had lots of heat/steam, so their vaps were usually pretty good, although Draings had a crew of over 300, and if one of the two vaps went down = instant water restrictions.

I was on a survey ship for a while, and that was diesel, no steam. So they had ONE electric flash vap that used to make about a ton of water an hour when it was operating perfectly, but usually about 3/4 of a ton. So we had special water saving regimes. Only one shower a day (have it after work, just have a "bird bath" in the morning), and we always wore "pirate rig" of shorts and tee shirt while at sea, not uniform (unless fire party or stokers down the hole.) Even then, we were always "losing" and using more than we made. So we would usually be at sea for 3 weeks surveying at a time, with 4 weeks at a pinch, then go alongside and fill up with water. We could go much longer with food/fuel/helo fuel, but water was what limited our time at sea.


The other thing that is amazing on a ship is the organisation. The watch and station bill is an artform. A huge great "chart/spreadsheet" that takes into account EVERY person on the ship, every rank and rate, and where they will be for every evolution in every one of the dozen or so states (readiness/emergency etc) that the ship could possibly have to operate in. It records EVERY billet on the ship and assigns where they will be whatever happens. Again, one of the things the average sailor just "takes for granted."

That is just a bit of rambling on how/what/where. Just from memory, so probably forgotten a bit. I joined in June 73, and wore my uniform for the last time in September 2013, (joined when I was 15, left at 55) so I have probably forgotten a LOT. :P

While your page normally talks about battleships with far greater numbers in the crew, my experience ranges from over 300 (Darings), 250 (DE's), and 185 (Anzac FFH) personnel. But to see that many people crammed into that space/living with each other and around so much voltage; and making use of every possible nook and it really is something to behold how the organisation

And I loved every minute of it. :-)

[johnathanmonkeysmackert]

This is one of those times when I’m not sure which is more fascinating Drachinifel discussing this subject, or the comments section from various naval personnel from various navies . This is prime entertainment, and info from all of you, as also Drach . Thank you all for discussing, and making sure history is never dead, but instead so alive you can masticate it like a fine steak . May fair seas and pleasant winds guide all of you’s journeys ! So much appreciation all!

[Big_E_Soul_Fragment]

"At the bottom of the ocean" -Submariners

[jamesmasonaltair]

My uncle is an engineering professor at Annapolis. I showed him this and other Drach vids. He was impressed and is a Drach fan now.
Even though Drach vids deal with non modern warships, future US Navy officers can still benefit from Drach's knowledge so I suggested he add Drach to his syllabus.

[CrashLoveless]

This puts a whole new spin on your video about the salvage of the fleet at Pearl Harbour. It makes you realize just how onerous the job was of cleaning out all of the various store rooms, especially the meat and food lockers.

We always knew it would’ve been an awful job, but it gets you to realizing just how much backbreaking smelly disgusting work that had to have been.

[williambinkley]

I served on the USS Bainbridge CGN-25 in the 1990s. The berthing compartment I was in had originally been a storage space. When the ship was first built it had almost half the crew that we had in the 90s. This had a couple of consequences. The first was that the head originally designed to be used by about 75 sailors was now used by 150 sailors. The second was a bit stranger and wasn’t discovered for years. Since the space was originally not intended to be crewed for long periods, it had no fresh air provided. We had a lot of problems with headaches and sleeping problems. Eventually the ship’s doctor put two and two together and figured out that there was a dangerous buildup of CO2. Since by this point the ship was only a couple years from retirement, the Nvy in its infinite wisdom decided to just put an emergency fan on top of the escape hatch on the main deck and ran trunking down through the escape hatches down to the compartment. Two problems with this, first was the noise levels, and second and more importantly was the loss of the escape route in the event of an emergency like a fire.

[steveschulte]

A bit of commentary. The Ships Store and Comm office is not a storeroom, per se, it held the officers and CPO's of the supply division during the day. The Repair lockers are not stowage spaces, but store the equipment for damage control and to direct the DC teams when everything is on fire. There are many engineering storerooms that store those items needed quickly for day to day sailing. The SD storerooms forward and lower in the ship store large, heavy, and bulky items that could fit through the deck hatch. There is usually a pad eye above the hatch to attach a chain hoist, or block and tackle, to move items up and down. The supply department issue room on a carrier or newer LST was usually down a couple of ladders from the main deck. I did not like going down six ladders to get a part on a carrier. Or going down several ladders, through several 18" scuttles, and through several water tight doors during refresher training drills. Ships Service stores would be items like laundry soap, ships store is where you could buy a candy bar, and they had storerooms for them. Ships Servicemen (SSx ratings) are the people who sell candy and personal soap, wash the laundry, repair uniforms, and cut hair.

[Kevin_Kennelly]

Rather Wonderful Drachisms of the Day.

22:52 "A rather wonderfully labeled 'Explosives and Grenades' ".

32:02 "The rather wonderfully named 'Supply Department: Acid Locker'.
I will leave it to others to describe what the acids, stored aboard, are used for.
Spoiler Alert: It's not quite as exciting as you might think."

Bonus Drachism (not as wonderful):

35:16 "The rather entertainingly named 'Chemical Warfare Materials Stowage'."