Actually, I haven't seen them make chain before. The Navy actually reuses them from decommissioned ships and only buys new stuff when one is lost. Yeah, yeah, your wondering how do you 'lose' an anchor chain that is more than 1,000 feet long, with 684 links weighing 365 pounds each (for the math imparied that's almost 125 tons of standard aircraft carrier chain, and she has 2 of them! For Jack - that's mush not meatloaf :roll: )? When you go to ‘set the anchor’ and screw up really, REALLY, REALLY badly, the chain just keeps feeding outta the hawse faster and faster (there is a point where the brake won't work) until it rips the king pin outta the chain locker, OR the whole locker outta the ship. If it’s in shallow enough water (less than 1000 fathoms (6000FT)) they’ll send a robot down to hook up recovery line – if the ship was smart enough to mark the spot ;-) if not, we (you and me via our taxes) buy a new one. Fortunately I’ve only heard of 1 story where an anchor and chain were lost at sea (in the last 32 years anyway).
The anchor chain for CVN 77 (GHW Bush) will probably be from the USS Constellation.
Interesting to see how they do it though. If you really want to see some metal fabbing, the Yard takes 1" thick steel plates (10ft by 20ft), heats'm up red and bends them into hull plates. I've also seen 1/2" plate "rolled" into 3' diameter (or so) tubes, then ‘bent’ before the 3/4" plate that was cut into circles, heated and formed into a dome then welded on those cylinders to make a 60-foot long 'banana' shaped tank to hold 4500-PSI oxygen or regular air to blow ballast. They’re banana shaped to fit the curve of a submarine hull, inside the ballast tanks.
Neat stuff though :t:
Mudrat
