Good2Golf said:
Chief Stoker, riding on your post as a basis for questioning, and totally up for input from any who know...if USS McCain had suffered a steering failure that swung her from say, a Starboard 30 position on Alnic MC drawing down toward Alnic's starboard beam as it passed on the port side of McCain, now to the Port across Alnic's bow, what would an 'immediate [power-related] action' be regarding ship control, if secondary steering wasn't successful? Full aft on the DDG's starboard screw and neutral on the port screw?
Regards
G2G
Allright, G2G. I've re-read the part underlined in yellow many times over and frankly ... what the hell are you talking about ???
I just can't picture what you mean, so as they say in Yes Minister, may I rephrase the question. Do you mean:
If McCain started from a position ahead of and about 30 degrees on Alnic's starboard bow and then suffered a steering breakdown that caused her to veer to port so that she would now cut off Alnic just as Alnic was almost coming level with the McCain, what would be the actions to take with the engines?
Is that the question?
If so, Lumber has answered you below, but not fully. Yes, the Arleigh Burke's are twin screws, but they are also controllable pitch (CPP). What he proposes, full ahead on the port engine combined with half astern on the starboard one would certainly send the bow swinging to starboard - even against a rudder stuck hard to port. In fact you would swing so fast you would get whiplash on the bridge.
To translate into air parlance, controllable pitch it's like a propeller airplane where you can control the pitch from a point where - based on the unchangeable direction of the shaft turning - you bite into the water so that you maximize forward trust and going all the way, in reverse, where you bit to maximize reverse trust. But unlike airplanes, we do not have "feathering" capability, so when you are at the "stop" position - midway - the blades of the screw are flat and act instead like a brake. You would be amazed how fast you lose way on a ship with CPP by going from, say 70% ahead power to merely "stop" position.
Contrary to what Chief Stoker implied, we don't wait until all other secondary and emergency steering methods have been used to start steering with engines. We teach OOW's that as soon as you realize you have a steering gear breakdown, you start steering with engines and continue to do so as long as necessary, even after the engineers inform you that they have switched to secondary. In fact, you would only proceed to test your secondary steering after you are convinced you can safely do so. In the meantime, you steer by engines.
In the case of the McCain, as soon as the helmsman reported loss of steering and the OOD notices a swing to port, he should have immediately (1) ordered the starboard engine stopped and evaluated the effect visually on the swing, if not enough then increase the difference between the two engines; (2) ordered the QM to sound six short blast on the ship's horn; (3) order the signals watch to hoist two black balls and issue a securite general call over channel 16 VHF to inform all traffic they had a steering gear breakdown in the strait.
If he noticed how close Alnic was, he should then have called for a general pipe to be made calling for the closing of all red openings followed by a pipe to brace for collision port aft, finally followed by emergency stations.
And G2G, if you look at the separation scheme that Lumber put just below here, you can see a thick purple line between the two opposing lanes. That's like a divider on the highway - no one should be there - however, what you don't see is that it's probably about half a nautical to 3/4 of nautical mile wide. With their CPP and the power at their disposal, Arleigh Burke's should be able to enter such a zone at full speed and actually immediately proceed to full astern and stop themselves fully while still inside that divider. It would however probably take an OOW with balls to pull something like that on his/her own without the captain.
