Posted on 01/05/2017 1:48:18 PM PST by Red Badger
No matter what other things may have been wrong with the ship. Hitting the iceberg is the cause of sinking. If it doesn’t hit the ice it doesn’t sink. End of story.
Over half the dead in the Wilhelm Gustloff sinking were children. The ship was on an evacuation mission.
There are leftists in Germany today who argue that the torpedoing of the Gustloff was a legitimate act of war.
I just spent 2 weeks on a cruise ship the Titanic sank because it did not have stabilizers its as simple as that. today when they yell Colombian coffee is now being served on the port side they compensate for the rush of people
That is still hilarious who said that first ? Don Rickles ?
While that may be, one should also consider the fact that the kriegsmarine repainted it from hospital ship colors to regular navy gray. S-13 saw the AA guns and figured her for a warship. What was the sub skipper supposed to think? I realize your average Russian isn’t the sharpest tool, but look at it from his perspective. Had we been in his position, would we have fired? I would have.
The Titanic sank because it had too much water in it...................
“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.
The Titanic did break in two pieces before it sank.............
That's right ... the water that should have stayed outside instead moved inside.
“Figure in the cold temperature acting upon it and it made it even worse.”
I can attest to cold temps affecting the strength of metal.
I have a project where I put about a 7,000 lb pull on a building with a 3/8 chain. In the summer the chain does not break and the building moves.
This winter I’m continuing the moving process over ice. At 20F this same chain keeps breaking. Several times. The pull should be less because it’s on ice (not frozen down either).
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.
What sank the Titanic? Hitting an iceberg. What many don’t know is the SS Californian was only a few miles away and Titanic’s radio operator ignored the Californian radio warnings of ice. When the warning was sent, the Titanic operator responded “Shut Up, I’m working Cape Race”. The Californian operator complied and the radio was shut off and the Titanic ran into the iceberg within 10 minutes. With no operator on the Californian, they didn’t respond to the distress call. So when people discuss what sank the Titanic, I educate them that it was a rude radio message.
If only they had banned Dihydrogen Monoxide.
In the early 1970’s I worked on coal carrying ore boats on the Great Lakes (boats on the Lakes are called ships on the oceans). On at least two occasions, our cargo would catch fire and we would see smoke and steam coming out the cargo holds. So it was not impossible for bunker coal to catch fire on the Titanic.
Excellent point. In every man made disaster it's usually not one thing. There is a chain of mistakes, any one of which if removed would have prevented the disaster from taking place. The Titanic disaster is a great example of this principle.
Considering what Frau Goebbels did to her children, I don’t think by then the Nazis really cared about their own children anyway.
This would depend upon the molecular structure of the metal in question.... if it was the equivalent of an A-36 today it would have little effect... if it contained a little too much carbon in the recipe, well then 1000 degrees over a coupla days would completely compromise the structure of the metal itself and turn it brittle... combine this with the fact that the purchasing agent for the job bought sub standard steel ( this is a documented fact ) and i do believe this is exactly what happened.....
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