R-16

Exterior and Crew Photos

R-16 under construction at the Bethlehem San Francisco (BSF) yard, January 3, 1918. Two of her sisters are on either side. BSF launched their boats only about 20% complete, finishing the work while the boat was sitting alongside a fitting out pier. BSF was very busy with wartime shipbuilding contracts, and had to clear the ways so that a new hull could be laid down. Their relatively roomy waterfront allowed them to do this. Other yards, like Bethlehem Quincy in Massachusetts launched the boat when it was about 59% complete. This photo shows her with a false bow that was added for the launch. It would later be replaced with a permanent one with a towing fairlead through the stem. R-16 is sitting very high in the water; both of her upper torpedo tubes are visible. The vertical cylinder in the center is the conning tower. Note the open hatch at the top that will eventually lead to the bridge. The conning tower will have an extensive fairwater built around it that will also form the supporting periscope shears.

Photo courtesy of the Submarine Force Library & Museum.

The rudder and stern planes of the R-16 while the boat was under construction on January 3, 1918 in San Francisco. The axial mounted rudder is attached right at the end of the hull. A push rod exits the aft skeg and is attached to the rudder. This rod enters the hull through a watertight packing gland and is used by the electrical steering gear inside the motor room to move the rudder left or right. Both of the stern planes are angled downward in the full dive position. The twin propellers have not yet been installed just forward of the planes.

Photo courtesy of the Submarine Force Library & Museum.

A very nice crew photo of the R-16, likely taken in Pearl Harbor in the early 1920's by famed Hawaiian photographer Tai Sing Loo. The young boy in front is likely the son of the commanding officer. Submarines and ships of the era sometimes had ceremonial mascots of young boys, so this young lad might be that too. The deck gun has been turned to port and the back row of men are standing on it.

U.S. Navy photo.

This photo of R-16 was taken in Pearl Harbor in the mid 1920's. It illustrates an unusual feature for the time. Instead of the boat's name (R-16) painted on the side of the fairwater, the boat's hull number is there (93). Although a Navy standard after 1938, having the hull number displayed during this time was quite rare. Why it is being done here is not known. All other R-class photos of this era show the name. That makes this view unique.

Photo courtesy of the USSVWII via Navsource.org

Interior Photos

Notes

A large number of interior photos of the R-16 were discovered at the Vallejo Naval & Historical Museum in California by submarine researcher Darryl Baker. He kindly took the time to scan the images and send them on to PigBoats.COM for posting. We have worked at bringing out as much detail of the images as possible and in a number occasions even make close-ups of interesting bits of information. The photos are reported to have been taken in 1923.

Torpedo Room

The R-16 torpedo tube doors. You can see that the hull narrows quite a lot at this point by the curvature of the hull frames. The hull at this point is not a true circle but a vertical ellipse.

Each door has a sea pressure gauge and sight glass except for door on Number One torpedo tube. The sight glass may have been damaged and has yet to be replaced. The tubes are numbered from right to left and top to bottom; 1, 2 and 3, 4. Odd numbers on the starboard side and even on the port side. The row of large wheel handles are for opening and closing the shutter doors on the outside of the bow. The shutters are inter-linked with the torpedo tube muzzle door that close off the seaward end of the torpedo tube.

The black squares in the corners are from the tabs that glued the photo into the original scrapbook.

Photo in the collection of the Vallejo Naval & Historical Museum. Contributed by Darryl Baker

Forward Battery Compartment/Berthing

This view in the R-16's forward battery compartment. This is just behind or aft of the torpedo room. This view is looking aft to the door into the control room. Lockers on the left are for the crew to put uniforms and personal items. The dark colored caged area houses the ships gyro compass.

The forward battery compartment housed both enlisted crew as well as the sub's three officers. The starboard side, seen here, is for bunks and lockers for enlisted. The port side, blocked off by a canvas curtain is where the officers had their quarters. On the right edge of the photo can be seen the end of a table with cloth over it. This table acted as a desk and eating surface for the officers.

Under the deck was one half of the boat's massive storage battery. It contained 60 cells. The battery well was covered by wood planking and bolted down and then heavy canvas was shellacked down over the planks to make it watertight. Shellac gave the decks their dark green color.

Photo in the collection of the Vallejo Naval & Historical Museum. Contributed by Darryl Baker

This photo shows the officer's side of the forward battery compartment. The rest of the table/desk can be seen with books and note books on it. Over the table hangs a portable light that could be unplugged and stored away while at sea so it wouldn't be damaged.

Two of the officer's bunks are seen on the right of the photo. There are storage lockers under the bunks. Not seen are larger cupboards and lockers for officer's use. The purpose of the six canisters against the bulkhead are unknown. They could hold soda lime to absorb CO2 in an emergency, although the containers seem a bit small for that purpose. Battery well ventilation blowers are seen against the bulkhead along with piping to the battery well. This system was used to exhaust battery gases during charging to prevent explosions.

The dark shaft seen to the left of top center, next to the valve handle, is the drive shaft for operating the bow planes.

Photo in the collection of the Vallejo Naval & Historical Museum. Contributed by Darryl Baker

The captain's bunk with a light and depth gauge. Unlike later boats the commanding officer did not have a private space. These boats were too small for that.

Photo in the collection of the Vallejo Naval & Historical Museum. Contributed by Darryl Baker

The depth gauge is dual calibrated. It shows the depth to keel and pounds per square inch of pressure. Even though this gauge was calibrated to 300 feet, the maximum safe operating depth (test depth) for an R-boat was 200 feet.

Photo in the collection of the Vallejo Naval & Historical Museum. Contributed by Darryl Baker

Control Room

This is the forward end of the control room, just to the left of the helm wheel, which is visible on the right. These are valves and gauges for the compressed air system. These gauges give pressures in various banks, tanks, and systems.

The surrounding gauges seems to be for monitoring the various air pressure systems; 60 psi., 100 psi., 200 psi., & 300 psi. Hinted at but no photo taken, at the left top is another gauge which is possibly part of a series of gauges for the different air banks.

Photo in the collection of the Vallejo Naval & Historical Museum. Contributed by Darryl Baker

In this close up the top row of dials shows, left to right; a gauge marked "Air Flask". The center is a barometer. On the right is a gauge marked "Air Manifold".

The center row, left to right the dials say: "Aft Trim Tank"; Sea Pressure" and "Fwd Trim Tank".

The bottom row of dials say; "Regulator"; "Auxiliary Tank"; "Aft Main Ballast", and "Fwd Main Ballast".

Photo in the collection of the Vallejo Naval & Historical Museum. Contributed by Darryl Baker

This air manifold handles the blow functions for ballast tanks, with the "Auxiliary Tank" on the left, "Forward Trim" in the center and "After Trim" on the right. Printed in paint written above the label plate someone has painted the word "BLOW" probably to avoid confusion on which handles to turn.

Photo in the collection of the Vallejo Naval & Historical Museum. Contributed by Darryl Baker

Moving left around the compartment, this is the dive station of the R-16. The station is on the port side of the control room. That makes the bow of the submarine to the right in the photo. The wheel on the right is for the bow planes and the one on the left is for the stern planes.

The depth gauges only show 100 feet though the submarines had a test depth of 200 feet. Many skippers complained about having no way of knowing how deep they were after the first 100 feet. Finally the Navy relented and made deeper gauges available.

Above the stern planes wheel is a speaking tube, though where it came from or went isn't known at this time.

Photo in the collection of the Vallejo Naval & Historical Museum. Contributed by Darryl Baker

Continuing on our swing to the left around the control room of the R-16 we come to the main motor field rheostats, seen at the top of the photo, and the engine order telegraphs in the center. At the bottom are the motor controller hand switches.

This arrangement sits on the forward side of the bulkhead that enclosed the radio room. The view is looking aft. Between the engine order telegraphs is a bell and on either side of that are small signs that say "PORT" and "STAR". Since the operator is facing aft the controls would be backwards so board is set up as if the operator was facing the other direction. This whole arrangement was moved aft of the engine room in later submarine classes and eventually became what is known as the maneuvering room.

Photo in the collection of the Vallejo Naval & Historical Museum. Contributed by Darryl Baker

Stepping around the corner from the motor controllers you are looking to port and into the door of the radio room. It is a pretty small space maybe four feet by four feet in size. In the center is the transmitter/receiver, likely Morse Code only. This was 1920's crystal and vacuum tube technology. It generated a low-power signal and required very long line antenna aerials topside in order to get any useable range. It tended to overheat and be unreliable, but it was a tremendous advance over semaphore and signal lamps and allowed the boats to stay in contact with their squadron command or a shore station.

Photo in the collection of the Vallejo Naval & Historical Museum. Contributed by Darryl Baker

From this view the photographer is standing almost in the center of the control room looking directly aft. On the right is the ladder that leads up into the conning tower. Behind that is the #2 periscope. The #1 periscope was only usable from the conning tower, out of the picture to the right and above. There is a third periscope located in the after battery compartment.

The two large boxes on the bulkhead can also be seen in the photo showing the Motor Controllers. The man standing at a small desk is Radio Electricians Mate 3rd Class E. R. Brown and would have worked in the radio room. He would have also needed to know how to send Morse Code via blinker light and send and read semaphore using hand flags, combining the jobs of Radioman and Signalman into one job on a submarine. The R-16 was stationed at Pearl Harbor for 11 years. These subs had no air conditioning and were hot below decks, hence the reason for the casual dress seen in this photo.

To the left in the photo are seen the levers for operating the Kingston valves that are used for diving or surfacing.

Photo in the collection of the Vallejo Naval & Historical Museum. Contributed by Darryl Baker

Rounding on to the starboard side of the submarine we come to the Kingston levers. These are used to open and shut large valves in the bottoms of various tanks to let water in or out as needed. The large valves were mechanically linked to these levers and had were fully manually operated. There was no power assist of any kind. Oftentimes, water pressure made these valves very hard to open and combined with the mechanical resistance from the linkage, operating these levers required a tremendous amount of brute strength.

The large sight gauges seen to the right and left of the Kingston levers are, on the right, for the Auxiliary Tanks (there were two of these) and the one on the left is for the Regulator Tank. (This tank is to change its name in the future and become the Negative Tank. All were used to adjust Trim and Weight.)

The large tube in the upper left corner and extending over the top of the first three levers is the barrel cooling tube for the Lewis Mk VI Light Machine Gun that would be mounted on the bridge if needed.

Photo in the collection of the Vallejo Naval & Historical Museum. Contributed by Darryl Baker

The name plates on the levers are readable for the most part. Left to right the first four levers are: unreadable, "Port (something) Main Ballast Kingston", "Port For'd Main Ballast Kingston", and the last is "Stbd For'd Main Kingston".

Photo in the collection of the Vallejo Naval & Historical Museum. Contributed by Darryl Baker

The last four Kingston levers are easier to read. Left to right they are: "Regulator Tank Kingston", "Auxiliary Tank Kingston", "Port Aft Main Ballast Kingston", and "Stbd Aft Main Ballast Kingston".

The Regulator Tank handle looks to have some sort of coating to make it feel different. The Auxiliary Tank Kingston handle has been wrapped and then a Turks Head Knot applied to it so it feels different from all the rest. It is also painted. This was an attempt to make it easier to operate the levers correctly in the dark.

Photo in the collection of the Vallejo Naval & Historical Museum. Contributed by Darryl Baker

This is the trim and drain manifold. Manipulating these valves allowed the operator to move ballast water to various tanks in the fore, amidships, and aft parts of the boat. This greatly aided in keeping the boat on an even keel while submerged.

Only a few names can be read on the right side name plate. The far left says "From Bilge". The next two are unreadable. The fourth reads "Trim Line Aft". The fifth reads "From Duct Keel". The last is unreadable. The large back box with the big wheel is the regulator for the trim pump, used for moving the ballast water between the various tanks.

In the upper right corner of the photo the rest of the Lewis Mk VI .30-06 light machine gun can be seen. There were mounts on the bridge where this could be placed if it was needed for protection.

Photo in the collection of the Vallejo Naval & Historical Museum. Contributed by Darryl Baker

The famous WWI era "Lewis Gun", known in the U.S. Navy as Lewis Mk VI. Invented by American Army Colonel Isaac Newton Lewis, he couldn't get the U.S. military to buy the gun. Lewis resigned his commission and moved his operation to Belgium and also licensed it for manufacture in England when WW I started.

Lewis and family settled in England where he became extremely rich from license agreements for his gun. The English and Empire troops used it with much success all through WW I and WW II. After WWI, the U.S. military adopted it in numbers, although it was never as popular as the .30 caliber Browning Machine Gun. There were two calibers for this gun, the British .303 and the American .30-06. The gun used a distinctive 47 or 97 round circular pan magazine mounted on the top of the weapon. It also had extensive cooling fins attached to the barrel, covered by a tube that made the barrel look a lot larger than it really was. Lewis Guns were used by many nations up through the mid 1950's.

If you look closely at the movie "Star Wars: A New Hope" there is a scene in which filmmaker George Lucas adapted a Lewis gun as a Stormtrooper weapon!

Photo in the collection of the Vallejo Naval & Historical Museum. Contributed by Darryl Baker

After Battery Compartment/Crew's Mess

Engine Room

Motor Room

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