During World War II, shipboard life in the United States Navy was a gamble. No matter which theater of operations you found yourself in, the enemy was all around on land, sea, and air, ready to deliver a fatal blow and send your ship to the bottom. Fast forward a couple of decades and Navy life was just as hazardous but in a different way, as this Navy training film on the shipboard hazards of low-voltage electricity makes amply clear.
With the suitably scary title “115 Volts: A Deadly Shipmate,” the 1960 film details the many and various ways sailors could meet an untimely end, most of which seemed to circle back to attempts to make shipboard life a little more tolerable. The film centers not on the risks of a ship’s high-voltage installations, but rather the more familiar AC sockets used for appliances and lighting around most ships. The “familiarity breeds contempt” argument rings a touch hollow; given that most of these sailors appear to be in their 20s and 30s and rural electrification in the US was still only partially complete through the 1970s, chances are good that at least some of these sailors came from farms that still used kerosene lamps. But the point stands that plugging an unauthorized appliance into an outlet on a metal ship in a saltwater environment is a recipe for being the subject of a telegram back home.
The film shows just how dangerous mains voltage can be through a series of vignettes, many of which seem contrived but which were probably all too real to sailors in 1960. Many of the scenarios are service-specific, but a few bear keeping in mind around the house. Of particular note is drilling through a bulkhead and into a conduit; we’ve come perilously close to meeting the same end as the hapless Electrician’s Mate in the film doing much the same thing at home. As for up-cycling a discarded electric fan, all we can say is even brand new, that thing looks remarkably deadly.
The fact that they kept killing the same fellow over and over for each of these demonstrations doesn’t detract much from the central message: follow orders and you’ll probably stay alive. In an environment like that, it’s probably not bad advice.
Just had to add my two cents here as a former crewmember on both USN and USNS ships from 2002 to 2022:
– all of the ships I was on used a “hot-hot-neutral” electrical system for supplying 110VAC. No ground.
– the most common job of engineering was “chasing grounds” where a short of some type had popped a breaker or burned through the insulation.
– circuit breakers were -everywhere- in the electrical system to protect the crew.
– several of my co-workers got zapped pretty well (no fatalities), but the “touch with the back of hand” mantra for electrical work was heavily used. You never knew exactly which cable near the one you were working on was still ‘hot.’ One of the proverbs was “Lock-out, tag-out, breaker-out, or check-out”
– Any electrical service provided by a shipyard was always suspect.
– yard-birds never removed the original cables for any system that was being replaced/removed.
the “touch with the back of hand” mantra for electrical work is so oldschool! We should really move to modern ways like screwdriver probes, non contact voltage detectors, pocket multimeters (some already have NCV) etc. This gear today is small cheap and available.
I am not judging you – your workplace could be so different than mine (hard to get probes in middle of ocean or not enough multimeters on board).
Oldschool and reliable. Why skip a habit that costs nothing and adds a safety margin on all the modern safety gear?
17:11 wondering why the outlets are mounted on a slant?
So that they will fit within that space on the wall. It is hard to tell but there are thick metal ridges on both sides. It was probably installed after the fact, so it was angled a bit.
When I was in the navy I don’t remember seeing those types of outlets being used anymore for 115v.
To the person talking about FUD, on a ship you are much more likely to be shocked. I was an Electronics Technician (ET) and there are plenty of times I found fuses with the wrong rating, or faulty wiring. You are surrounded by metal and salt water pipes!
I even found wires that had been twisted together on speaker and the wires were so long that it would take 20 minutes for the fuse to blow only my system. Took 2 days to track it down to a guy who had been hanging his jacket on a wire and just decided to twist it together and wrap it in electrical tape. I could go on and on with the jackassery I witnessed. Not much has changed since the video was made in 1960 and now.
Maybe so water would roll off?
… was that Karl Ranseier? (sorry, might only be known locally, but that was my first thought on reading the last paragraph :o)
Reminds me of a work colleague who wanted to be helpful and install some shelf supports for the office secretary. Smart guy with a PhD in a theoretical field, but not exactly handy, and bit lacking in common sense. He drilled through the drywall fine, but the stud behind seemed pretty tough. He persevered, finally drilling through the conduit serving the 208V 400A panel on the other side of the wall…
The arc flash was spectacular, but fortunately nobody was hurt, and the building is still standing. The drill bit was vaporized, of course, and I’m pretty sure the guy never touched a power tool again.
I used to be a cable TV tech and I had a situation once where the mains coming into the house(the two-inch thick cable from the meter to the breaker box) was run, contrary to code, laterally through an exterior wall(cinder blocks) at an odd angle(I can’t even fathom how they managed to do it, honestly)…
I, following my specs, had to put a hole in the wall for passage of a cable using a 3/8″ 14″ masonry hammer-bit. Needless to say, I managed to put that bit right through the mains cable. Lots of sparks from the hole and a neatly melted masonry bit. No shock, and the DeWalt cordless was fine. I felt bad for the homeowners – they lost power. They were made whole again; we had insurance for that kind of stuff. But whoever installed the electric in that home had done it the wrong way. The insurance adjuster and electrician agreed, according to the report. I don’t understand how it passed initial inspection.
“Familiarity breeds contempt”–Different in a war setting compared to a civilian one. I am reminded of part of Ernst Junger’s anecdotes about WWI in which he describes soldiers regularly picking up unexploded shells, picking at the detonator with the end of their pipe, and blowing themselves (and a section of the trenches) to smithereens. Some even collected them and kept them in their sleeping quarters, meaning even a minor direct hit would be turned into a complete disaster. It was difficult to know which segments of the trench network were essentially unmarked munitions depots.
A lot of military life is boredom, and boredom not only makes one stupid, it makes you crazy as well. It’s a problem
She could be any ship in the navy, but in fact she is DD-531 the Hazelwood, a Fletcher-class destroyer. Not sure about the interior shots, but that’s the hull at the start of the film.
I’m sure OSHA(?) has rules for using an isolating transformer every time one works with wired electrical tool inside a metal enclosure for the same reason.
The only diff is that putting iso-transformers everywhere in a ship is not practical/feasible.
These trainings films do it all wrong,
eventhough it’s understandable why they do so.
Because from a psychological point of view,
the CORRECT way of doing things must be shown first – then the mistakes.
That’s the way how the correct method gets stuck for longer in the mind.
Though from an entertainment point of view the wrong order is more appealing, of course.
Our “Staplerfahrer Klaus” (Forklift Driver Klaus) is a good example, here, I suppose. ;)
Why would that be the case?
It depends on the audience.
In this case it is a bunch of bored/tired out-of-their-minds knuckleheads.
If you show the safe way first, they miss it.
BAM!
Huh? What? Oh that guy was an idiot.
Okay. I guess that other way is safer…
I have put together many training videos for classes while in the service.
You put the shocking/gruesome stuff first, because it grabs their attention.
Know your audience.
Even farmers know “you can’t plug in a 2 with a 6”
That is a blast from the past. USN was still using that film for training into at least the early 90s but it had been transferred to VHS.
I had one of my men shocked and seriously injured, not killed thankfully, trying to pull a fuse barehanded as shown at 6:40. I also found numerous instances of fuses replaced with bolts or short lengths of copper pipe because otherwise the fuses kept blowing.
Wait. You mean I shouldn’t use a screwdriver to remove the fuse?
Heh. 😉
Seriously though, phase testers can be useful here.
They’re essentially transparent/translucent screwdrivers with a built-in glow lamp.
They can be used for testing if there’s power on a given mains wire.
Ouch. Reminds me a bit about the practice of some CB radio operators with their radios and linear amplifiers (linears).
They’ve sometimes applied alu foil or the metal foil of chewing gums to “fix” blown fuses.
That was merely 12v to 24v, though – albeit with quite some amps.
That is a blast from the past. USN was still using that film for training into at least the early 90s but it had been transferred to VHS.
I had one of my men shocked and seriously injured, not killed thankfully, trying to pull a fuse barehanded as shown at 6:40. I also found numerous instances of fuses replaced with bolts or short lengths of copper pipe because otherwise the fuses kept blowing.
Sorry for the double tap. Please delete.
I was in the US Navy as an FC (firecontolman) worked right along with the EM (Electrician mates). everything brought on board ship has to be checked to see if it can be used.
The US Navy ships run a unique system as there is NO neutral wire, everything is split phase or 3 phase. 120vac outlets are two 60vac hots and the ground is connected to the ship frame.
240vac is only found in ships laundry and most equipment is 3phase 480vac.
Was also a Twiget (ET) (CV-67) (LHA-4)… Yes, I remember 60-67 VAC on each leg (wire) and the return through ground.
Dan Phillips
I was in the Navy in the late 1970’s and had just built a personal computer. Took it down to the Electrician’s Mates and they checked it over and I got a nice “Approved” sticker. The guy with the fan should have gotten his equipment checked – a moment rewiring it and he would have lived to enjoy his found breeze.