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From: budden@trout.nosc.mil (Rex A. Buddenberg)
Newsgroups: sci.military
Subject: Re: Electric warship propulsion
Summary: more...
Message-ID: <1990Dec19.005925.24328@cbnews.att.com>
Date: 19 Dec 90 00:59:25 GMT
References: <1990Dec17.051438.29694@cbnews.att.com>
Sender: military@cbnews.att.com (William B. Thacker)
Organization: Naval Ocean Systems Center, San Diego
Lines: 38
Approved: military@att.att.com



From: budden@trout.nosc.mil (Rex A. Buddenberg)

Electric propulsion has been around before.  The reason the Navy
is interested is because of some new ways to generate and convey
electricity (superconducting) and batlle-group-wide systems engineering
ones.

Two classes of Coast Guard cutter were electric powered:
 Wind Class Icebreakers (7 hulls, plus Glacier) were all diesel-electric.
Winds had 6 Fairbank-Morse diesels arranged with a pair in each
engineroom.  Two side-by-side motor rooms back aft with 5000 HP
motors.  900 V DC system.  
 Originally, these ships had a bow motor room with a third screw
on the centerline.  And the #1 engine room is a mirror image of B3,
not a clone.  This worked fine in the Finnish Baltic breakers which
the Winds were modeled after, but they didn't work very well in
multi-year polar pack ... kept finding bow motor parts back in B2:-)
So the bow prop got taken off very early in the breaker's lives and
the B1 generators were rewired to work in parallel with the rest
of the generator plant and drive the stern props.
 In the mid-70s, Northwind and Westwind were re-engined with four
Cats vice the six F-Ms; that lasted a decade.
 The Coast Guard's Polar class breakers -- 1970s vintage -- are both
diesel/gas turbine geared drive with controllable pitch propellors;
three screws aft.
 The new icebreaker in design now goes back to the conventional
diesel electric plant.

The other electric drive cutter was the Lakes class cutter (WHEC-255)
that was the mainstay of the ocean station fleet.  This plant was a
steam turbine/AC electric drive system.  Single screw.  Beyond those
basics, I can't say a whole lot -- the ships have been gone for 15 years
and I escaped ocean station duty and drove icebreakers instead (much
more fun to drive a ship where you are paid to run into things:-)

Rex Buddenberg