12/03/24
July 18, 2020
SportsFilter: The Saturday Huddle:
A place to discuss the sports stories that aren't making news, share links that aren't quite front-page material, and diagram plays on your hand. Remember to count to five Mississippi before commenting in anger.
You got me thinking of how much steel is in the Mackinac Bridge that connects the lower and upper peninsulas of Michigan. The Golden Gate has 88,000 tons of steel and the Mighty Mac has 71,000 tons of steel. However, the Golden Gate is only about a mile and a half long whereas the Mackinac (bonus internet points if you can pronounce the name correctly without looking it up) is about five miles long.
Here is a page that details the building of the Mackinac Bridge, but it fails to mention that the workers suffered around 22,000,000,000,000,000,000 mosquito/black fly bites per summer.
posted by NoMich at 01:53 PM on July 18, 2020
Beaverboard, I can't believe that in one post you have mentioned 2 of the 3 aircraft carriers that I worked in. Midway, of course, is my true love. If you've ever served aboard a ship, you would understand. While I was in her, I was called to do a "tech assist" aboard USS Constellation up in the North Arabian Sea. Catapult shot off Midway to Subic Bay, Philippines; bus to Clark AFB; C-141 to Diego Garcia for a meal and 4 hours of sleep; US-3 to the Connie; and my one and only arrested landing aboard. I was in her for about 6 weeks while we squared away the test equipment for the aircraft self protective systems. This was the time of the Tanker Wars, so armed conflict was probable. 6 weeks later I took a cat shot off, and reversed the journey back to Japan. Spent about 3 or 4 weeks with my wife, and it was back out to sea in Midway , and back to the North Arabian Sea. Such a fun job it was.
The 3rd carrier was USS Forestall , but I was only aboard her for a week or two while she did some pre-deployment work ups and air group training. She was the first of the modern supercarriers.
The steel content of Midway has changed over her life. To begin with, she was not much larger than the Essex class of WW2 fame. After the Korean War, as jet aircraft became the standard, she was modified to have an angled flight deck and an extra catapult. This added a lot of steel, and put her deep enough in the water that the forward aircraft elevator was unusable in a moderate sea. In 1986 she underwent a yard period to remove all excess equipment and weight, and to modify the shape of her hull to improve her sea keeping. I reported aboard toward the end of the yard period.
posted by Howard_T at 02:35 PM on July 18, 2020
The Carolina Hurricanes official team photo
posted by NoMich at 08:24 PM on July 18, 2020
Nice, NoMich!
posted by billsaysthis at 11:20 AM on July 20, 2020
This is a Howard T. - inspired post. It includes a flyunder in lieu of a NFL approved flyover.
I was reading up on the Golden Gate Bridge and was surprised to find out that there's there's less than 100,000 tons of steel in it. I said to myself, "heck, that's not much more tonnage than a battleship or a carrier".
The original Bethlehem steel contract put the tonnage at right around the fully loaded displacement of the USS Midway, which Howard told us he had worked aboard.
Later bridge tallies increased the steel tonnage, so the revised naval equivalent would have been a heavier carrier such as the Constellation.
Here's the Constellation passing under the GG Bridge. Hard to imagine that the amount of steel in the structure is roughly the same as the full displacement of the ship.
(The full weight of the bridge is many times higher with all the concrete etc. and the full displacement of the carrier includes all items and materials.)