Engineers save Peleliu flood relief mission - Navy News | News from Afghanistan & Iraq - Navy Times

Engineers save Peleliu flood relief mission

Engine problems threatened to sideline the amphibious assault ship Peleliu in early August as it responded to the humanitarian crisis in Pakistan, but a team of engineers flown out from the U.S. was able to keep the ship underway.

Sailors discovered leaks in the ship’s boiler tubes, caused by holes and cracks too serious for onboard engineers to fix. So the fleet called in workers from Virginia’s Norfolk Naval Shipyard, which sent 22 people and 15,000 pounds of tools and equipment to meet Peleliu in the Arabian Sea.

At stake was the rest of the deployment; if the ship couldn’t be repaired, it might have to break away from the relief mission and limp to a port. Not only that, although the Navy’s engineers knew what kind of repairs the ship needed, they’d never done it at sea before.

“Having served on a [ship with a] steam plant, I understand all too well what is involved with this repair,” Naval Surface Forces boss Vice Adm. D.C. Curtis said in a Navy announcement. “I was very impressed when I heard the team completed these complex repairs and testing, normally accomplished during a depot level availability, in little more than a week after arriving onboard.”

But getting all those people and all that stuff to the ship was “kind of a logistical nightmare,” said Charlie Caudle, the shipyard’s superintendent for amphibious ship repairs: First, the team had to catch a ride with the dry cargo and ammunition ship Lewis and Clark, which rendezvoused with Peleliu in the Arabian Sea, then fly by helicopter with all their gear over to the gator. Once they arrived, the work went smoothly, Caudle said.

Small, but serious, leaks

Peleliu has two massive oil-fired boilers that heat water to create steam, which ultimately spins the two propellers and makes the ship go. With all the heat and pressure involved, a leak in the main space is deadly serious, because, at least, it can force the crew to take one of the shafts offline.

At worst, it can lead to an explosion.

“You’re jeopardizing the boiler at that point,” Caudle said. “You’re jeopardizing your ability to make steam, and you have to cease until you can get it rectified.”

But first the shipyard engineers had to find the leaks themselves. So they slowly let water into the boiler, without lighting the fire, until they could see drops bubbling from the weak points on the offending tubes.

“You can actually see some water coming out,” Caudle said. “You’re not talking about a stream of water unless it’s a good-sized pinhole leak — it’s more like, you wipe it and it weeps, then you wipe and it weeps, and that’s how you know where to start.”

The shipyard team had brought all the gear they needed for the job; once they were all aboard, the group of boilermakers, pipefitters and welders got to work disassembling and re-welding the boiler tubes. It’s a long process, Caudle said, because the metal has to be gradually heated in 50-degree increments, then cooled the same way. The first engineers got to the ship Aug. 7, and work wasn’t finished until Aug. 15. When it was done, engineers again “hydro’d” the boiler — letting in water — to check their work. The fixes held.

The boiler repairs were another chapter in what has proved to be an eventful deployment: After a cracked weld delayed the ship’s departure in May, much of Peleliu’s air wing flew ashore to Pakistan to help transport evacuees and relief supplies in the wake of widespread flooding. In the midst of it all, the ships’ skipper, Capt. David Schnell, was relieved of command Aug. 15 after an investigation found he had been “unduly familiar” with some crew members.

The machinery problems also were the latest reminder of the quiet tension between the Navy and congressional lawmakers over the fate of Peleliu and its older Tarawa-class sibling, Nassau. Big Navy wants to get rid of both the older amphibs within the next five years, but that move could be held up by members of Congress concerned about what they view as a fleet shrinking too fast.

Caudle said he couldn’t say whether Peleliu’s age played a role in the ship’s engine problems — “that’s an engineering issue; we’re just the production side,” he said — just that he was glad it turned out his team was able to do what is normally major pierside work while the gator continued on its missions as part of the flood relief.

“They can go back to normal operations after this,” he said. “When we left, she had both boilers full up.”