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Page 66 The vessel is equipped with two 750-hp bowthrusters. The decision to use two tunnels rather than one was based on thruster diameter and the desire to keep the tunnels submerged at light draft levels. The size of the vessel and river navigation also dictated two similarly powered stem thrusters. In the construction of the midbody modules, material flowed through an assembly line to a final assembly point, while labor was reasonably fixed at one location to allow repetitive operations. The shipyard technical staff developed innovative techniques for handling, moving and aligning modules. Throughout the module fabrication, alignment of module to module and midbody to bow and stem, a Laser throdolite was used. The red Laser beam aligned on a desired reference point threw a point of red light on the target. Moving the structure with its attached target until the point of light was properly located on the target brought the units into within 1/16th inch of perfect alignment. Unloading equipment tolerances required that the longitudinal centerlines of the bow, each module, and the stem, fall within a zone Vi inch each side of the vessel's centerline regardless of whether the offset of the centerline was caused by horizontal or angular misalignment.The development of the new procedure made the use of electro-welding effective for seam welds. No riveted seams are used as crack arresters. Instead, a grade Eli plate was used at the bilge and gunwale; these were normalized after forming and carried a minimum after forming and carried a minimum of six feet onto the deck and bottom shield. Cargo-hold slopes and hogbacks were plated with 50,000 pst yield steel to again a higher Brinell than was formerly available. The upper and lower figures of the hull girder were made of high strength steels to gain a 1,000-long ton deadweight improvement. On deck, eighteen Walz & Kreuger hatches, spaced on 48-foot centers are dogged, opened and closed by individually electrically driven hydraulic units located at each hatch. The main propulsion unit consists of four Electric Motive GM, Model 20-645E7 diesel engines, each mounted on a common skid with, and powering, four E.M.D. Model A-10 a-c main generators having through shaft drives connected to pneumatic disconnect clutches and powering two Falk double-input, single-output main reduction gears. The vessel is twin screw, two engines and a gear for each shaft. The propellers are both controllable pitch, each eighteen feet in diameter. The engine room was designed for one man operation. Starting, stopping, running and monitoring functions all can be performed at the console. While the basic control for the various functions (unloading, thrusters, propulsion, ballast, etc.) is located in the engine control room, this control can be passed to the pilot house as desired. The actual thruster controls are centered in the pilothouse and control can be transferred to the remote stations as necessary. The ballast system is unique in that each ballast tank has its own pumps, thus there are eighteen pumping stations on the spar deck. There are thirty-six deck mounted deep well turbine-type ballast pumps, one fill pump (3,100 gpm) and one discharge (3,600 gpm) at each station. The vessel can be completely de watered in about three hours. All quarters, plus the wheelhouse, cargo unloading control room and the engine control room are air conditioned. The unloading system was designed to handle a varying unloading rate from 6,000 to 20,000 long tons per hour with a free-flowing material of two inch lump size and below. Her capacity of being able to discharge 20,000 tons per hour is said to be three time faster than any other ore ship in the world. The main components of the system consist of a specially designed metering feed gate, a single 10-foot wide steel-cord conveyor belt, a 60-foot diameter wheel elevator, a 98-long by 10-foot side transverse boom conveyor, and centrally located, programmed control station. The complement of navigational equipment includes two Raytheon radars, a Mackay radio direction finder, Raytheon fathometer (reading forward and aft), Benson Electric draft meters (reading forward, aft and midship), Sperry gyrocompass system, Leslie-tyfon whistles, Henschel rudder-angle and shaft rpm indicators, Henschel engine order telegraph, Lorain County radiotelephone (AM and FM), Hose McCann navigating lights, panel and ship service Dial-X telephone and Carlisle-Finch searchlights. Like her predecessors, the GRIFFIN and the WALK-IN-THE-WATER, and the USS