Ever boil water in a paper cup on a campfire as a scout?
Forensic testing of rivets from the bow plats indicate that they were substandard and not up to specs, so somebody was cheating the company. There were many things that added up to a disaster.................
“A bunker fire may have reached 1,000°C, but the outside hull steel plates that were in contact with the water never could have reached temperatures high enough to compromise their strength.”
Wouldn’t this apply just to the steel plates making up the outer hull? How about the internal framework, ribbing, bulkheads and whatever the plates are attached to? They would have been subjected to the heat.
Just a thought.
My thought also from trying to solder copper pipes with only a little water in them. Forget it.
I can see fire damaging a bulkhead, hull below the waterline? No.
***Ever boil water in a paper cup on a campfire as a scout? ***
When I worked in a steel fabrication plant, I filled a large paper cup with water and put in a steel heating furnace. The lit the gas. The flame was so hot the edges burned away, the paraffin coating melted and the water boiled. Only as the water level slowly dropped, then the edges on top would burn.
with an overheated flat plate, water dripped on it will jump, work it’s way into little balls and bounce and roll off as the steam will not allow the heated steel to cool fast enough. Eventually it does cool then the water will do it’s job of removing heat. In the cold Atlantic water, I have no doubt the water would have kept the steel cool.
In power plants, we found compressing and packing down the coal will prevent coal fires.