Sumner/Gearing & Fletcher engine rooms

The folks at DestroyerHistory.org sell a CD of engineering drawings of Bath Iron Works built Fletchers.   These are scans of the drawings which were microfilmed.   Their quality ranges from good to poor.  The drawings cover items which are usually not modeled, piping runs,  electrical wiring, internal tanks (fuel, sanitary, ballast),  rivit schedules, and internal structures.  It will get you closer (shapes/dimensions), but still won't get you to the details of the engine rooms.   The major equipment (boilers, blowers, turbines, etc.) were built by other contractors and are referred in the plans only as numeric call-outs.  You may only get a foundation drawing.  [The same happens for most armament details].

Don't limit yourself only to the Laffey in your research.  The National Park Service has the Cassin Young in Boston.  In Buffalo there is The Sullivans,  the Kidd is in Baton Rouge and the Joe Kennedy is in Fall River, MA.  There is [was] a DE in Albany, NY and another DE in Galveston, TX.   The Turner Joy [post Fletcher/Sumner/Gearing] is in Bremerton.

Contact the USArchives in Beltsville, MD.   They have a room full of microfilm of drawings of all sorts of ship related items, including many of the Fletcher/Sumner/Gearing.

Mr Grune, You are a wealth of information.

 

1)  Add the Orleck (Gearing) as a museum ship in Orange, TX

2)  Sumrall's "Sumner/Gearing-Class Destroyers" has some photos of engineering equipment as well as photos of the Gibbs & Cox builders model which shows engineering spaces.    Wow!  Are you sure that you want to enter this arena?   Are you a naval archetect and/or archetectural model builder?

Checking Fletcher references for Sumner/Gearing enginroom details is a good approach.   Sumrall notes several times that due to the extingencies of war, the machinery design for the Sumners (and their follow-ons) was not changed from that of the Fletcher so as to not disrupt war production

Just modeling a boiler or a turbine would be a nightmare of piping. Are you considering the entire propulsion plant? Yikes!

 

Yes ....boiler rooms would be a nightmare.........engine room.....not quite as tough. I believe there were two Laffey's in WWII.....the first Fletcher or pre-Fletcher (sunk in '42).....the second Sumner/Gearing survived the war. Depending upon which your Dad served in........I can help with the latter, having been on a Sumner/Gearing DD.....I could sketch a fair top-view of the aft engine room.....but as a scratchbuild..........if you had the basic layout.....maybe you could make it fly.

(I worked in the after fireroom, but used to wander everywhere) 

Yep, after looking into it a bit more it would be a nightmare to create, oh well it was a thought.

The web site for the USS Allen Sumner DD-692 offers a cd - the Booklet of General Plans of the ship.  I built a model of the USS Zellar's FRAM II, and I used these plans as a guide. What ship are you building?

I have sitting on a shelf the unfinished scratchbuilt boiler room in 72nd scale of a flower Class Corvette. It could be finished and will be someday. I used 2" pvc pipe for the boilers which came remarkably to scale. Evergreen styrene rods and tubes etc come in many different sizes.

My model of the Snowberry inspired my to get this going and a blueprint of sorts can be found online somewhere. 

It may not be as daunting as you think, if you work on it a little at a time 

I've been to the USS Kidd in Baton Rouge, LA many times and took many photos of her. The museum there has a few builders models. One is a 1/48th scale model of the Kidd as outfitted late in the war IIRC. This is a original builders model complete with the builders plaque and dates etc.. They also have a another model, again a builders model of the engine spaces. It's made from sheet metal and other materials, again looks to be from the shipyard builders. Don't know the scale but the engine space model is pretty big and is very detailed with piping, gangways etc., the entire propulsion spaces from the keel to the weather deck. IIRC it's about 4-5 feet long and shows the entire engine and boiler spaces. Maybe you can contact the museum and someone can photograph the engine space model for you. Also, Anatomy of the Ship series has a book on the Sullivans. It has many drawing in the back of the book of the engine/boiler spaces that could be helpful to you if you want to attempt this model.

The drawings you need are not system drawings, but rather machinery arrangement drawings.  They show the plans, sections and elevations of the machinery spaces, and the location of the major equipment in those spaces.  They show the outlines of boilers, turbines, red gears, pumps, heat exchangers, etc., and makes it easy to figure out what combination(s) of shapes you might need to construct them.  Once you build the equipment and lay it out in the machinery spaces, then you could determine how much piping, etc. you want to add.  Perhaps main steam piping because of its size.  Photos may be easier to obtain, but machinery arrangement drawings, which are to scale, would certainly take a lot of guesswork out of looking at photos.  I can check around and see what I have, I may have a few old plant training manuals in the attic.

Zellars wrote:

The web site for the USS Allen Sumner DD-692 offers a cd - the Booklet of General Plans of the ship.  I built a model of the USS Zellar's FRAM II, and I used these plans as a guide. What ship are you building?

That would be the USS Collett DD 730 also a Sumner FRAM II

Wilbur Wright wrote:

I have sitting on a shelf the unfinished scratchbuilt boiler room in 72nd scale of a flower Class Corvette. It could be finished and will be someday. I used 2" pvc pipe for the boilers which came remarkably to scale. Evergreen styrene rods and tubes etc come in many different sizes. My model of the Snowberry inspired my to get this going and a blueprint of sorts can be found online somewhere.  It may not be as daunting as you think, if you work on it a little at a time

Would it be possible to see some pics of your boiler room? it sounds awesome!

Thank you jpk, I think I will contact the Kidd's proprieters and inquire.

My boiler room is not assembled, sorry......... I used 2 inch pvc and cut it lenghtwise to scale then used tenax (lots)to glue sheet styrene to the open ends. once completely cured I cut with an xacto close to the rim and sanded down to the edge.  Keep in mind the scale is 72nd for my attempt.