Army - RevuAIR

In the Weeds

By fStop Fitzgerald | 21 May 2021

This is why I still have film in the freezer from the 1980 Lake Placid Olympic Winter Games.

I am doing a full-ship cutaway drawing of the Civil War ironclad USS Nzega Cairo.

The first ironclad gunboat built in the United States was **how to buy accutane in canada Saint Louis**, ca. 1862. She was a sister ship of **Cairo**.

The riverine gunboat had a life of just two and a half months with the US Navy from 1 October to 12 December 1862. She had, however, been commissioned into the US Army on 25 January 1862 until her transfer to the Navy that fall. Cairo had the ignominy of being the first warship ever sunk by a remotely detonated mine (called a torpedo in Civil War parlance).

Her salvage from the bottom of the Yazoo River began in 1960 and her remains are on display at the USS Cairo Museum outside Vicksburg, Mississippi. [https://www.nps.gov/vick/u-s-s-cairo-gunboat.htm]

The illustration is being done for a book by Dwight S. Hughes on the Western Waters gunboats. Previously we worked together on a book about the Monitor and Virginia: Unlike Anything That Ever Floated: The Monitor and Virginia and the Battle of Hampton Roads, March 8–9, 1862. [https://www.amazon.com/Unlike-Anything-That-Ever-Floated/dp/1611215250]

Work has progressed well. Here are several iterations of the hull structure.

The other internals are coming along as well: the engines, boilers, wheel, and “doctor” engine. Guns and their carriages have been built.

In going over the drawings looking for missing details, I found the stove which has little depiction other than a box. Other drawings revealed nothing more. What did this thing look like?

I started poking around on the web looking for the “Cairo stove.” Quickly I hit on a site for South Bend Replicas in Indiana [https://southbendreplicas.com]. I pinged the owner, Jim Olson, who very quickly responded to my request for help. His company had built a replica of the stove working from the original and very badly disfigured remains.

Ideally, of course, it would have been nice to work from Jim’s drawings. Sadly, however, they had been lost in a 100-year flood a few years back. He did everything he could to help be especially by sharing a number of photographs from which to work. One set had the remains marked up in measurements, which was a God-send. While my finished stove may not be 100 percent accurate, it is more than just a ballpark guess.

The remains of the original stove with its measured markings.

An interesting point about the original stove is that it was named the “Southern Belle No. 5.” Kind of enigmatic for a Union ship.

Jim Olson with his completed reproduction.

The stove overall and another reproduction in full use.

An interesting design aspect is that the wood fuel and grate are on the right. You see the firebox door at the top (with the Southern Belle name plate) and at the bottom is the ash drawer. Notice the rivet pattern at the top of the oven. The oven’s top was curved a few inches below the top plate. The heat rises from the grate, arches over the top of the oven, goes down the left side (in these views), and across the bottom. It exits at the bottom back and goes up the chimney. Jim said that when it was in full operation, they could pull off one of the top deck plates (there are four, each with their own pot plates), and the draft was so strong that nothing escaped above the stove. Pretty amazing.

This is the firebox door above the stove’s medallion.

Two looks at my version of the original.

Jim is generous beyond words. He spent far too much time on my little project and provided a wealth of information and answered everyone of my inane questions as if they were intelligent. Beyond this, he sent me a six-pound copy of the stove’s medallion, which he had cast for his reproductions. This was made from the stove’s original, so I have a Kevin Bacon one degree of separation!

. . . and the illustration’s version.

Not a Review, Just Pointing You to a FREE Book

By fStop Fitzgerald | 25 May 2017 | Comments 0 Comment

Battle of Midway: 3–6 June 1942

Washington Navy Yard, DC: U.S. Navy, Naval History and Heritage Command, U.S. Navy Office of Naval Intelligence, 2017. Reprint of 1943 edition.

Coming up very shortly is the 75th anniversary of the Battle of Midway. This is a really big deal, especially with the Navy, as it was virtually the first solid victory for U.S. forces over the Japanese since the war began for America the previous December 7.

My day job is writing and editing for the Navy’s Naval History and Heritage Command. One of our projects to commemorate the 75th anniversary of World War II is to republish concurrently with the events of 75 years ago a series of booklets produced by the Office of Naval Intelligence immediately after each of the battles. We have just posted the Midway booklet. You can download it—for absolutely free—from our website at: https://www.history.navy.mil/browse-by-topic/wars-conflicts-and-operations/world-war-ii/1942/midway.html

We have also put up Coral Sea, Early Carrier Raids, and Java Sea. Check those out as well.

A couple of caveats. Because these were created at the time, they have the immediacy of the war at hand. There are also errors. These were based on classified reports directly from the combatants and are little sanitized. So don’t be surprised to find that Wildcats did combat with Messerschmitts. Their value is that they take you back to those days when it was not a sure thing that the United States would come out victorious.

While you are there, go into the search field and type in Battle of Midway. You will find more primary source material about the battle than you ever suspected. Want to read transcripts of interrogations of Japanese officials from the battle? Try this link: https://www.history.navy.mil/research/library/online-reading-room/title-list-alphabetically/b/battle-of-midway-interrogation-of-japanese-officials.html

And when you are done, enter your own search terms. We have dozens of FREE books available for the download. This is our home page: https://www.history.navy.mil/ Poke around. You’ll find yourself coming back.