Nothing to do with Hood, but an interesting moment in time. Not long before closure of HMDYd Chatham. At the nuclear refit dock they built a fixed base crane to lift out heavy lifts from the subs. The crane needed a solid forged hook weighing 12 ton. The yard blacksmiths said they could manufacture it, but the government said no and offered out to contract. No one in U/K could make it so it was offered oversea, but still no reply. Eventually the yard blacksmiths said let us have a go as you have nothing to loose. So the blacksmiths went to work on a very old steam hammer, an yes they succeeded and the hook stayed on the crane until its demolition when the yard was closed, the firm given the task to develop the yard for commercial purposes systematically destroyed all the work shops in the yard and scrapped all the caissons for the dry docks and started to build houses instead. No1 blacksmith shop had 2 steam hammers and was built in 1765, with an earthen floor, they also made all the small chain quick release system for all RN boats on ships and out behind it they had a peg board with pins to hammer out the frames for all the subs built there to 1/4" tolerance, plus oven for heating the steel and steel lates going back to about 1865 and a frame for hammering steel plate into the desired shape for fitting to hulls,
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Topic: Rudder, HMS Hood. (Read 2422 times)