The destroyer escort vessel has caught the Navy’s eye. That eye is quick to detect the radical appearance of the bridge structure. Instead of the traditional pilot-house flanked by wings that constitute destroyer bridges you find a steering station resembling a conning tower with an open bridge immediately on top. This obvious conspiracy to separate the conning officer from his wheel and annunciator is instantly detected by many an indignant salt who passes quick judgment on the lack of foresight of a designer who knows so little of the sea. Many have sworn they would conn from the lower level, pacing around the outside of the steering station and passing their orders to the helm through one of the five small portholes. Others, with a good deal of escort duty under their belt, nod a quiet but very thorough approval of this typically British type of bridge.
The open bridge is not as open as the name implies. There is no overhead but the bulkheads come to chin height. A submariner would find the altitude discomforting, but the type of bridge would resemble his own. The P T skipper would be pleased to see that this new type of vessel employed the same bridge he had although it was certainly a long way from the water. A battleship officer standing at the DE conn would feel that he was substituting for Ben Hur in a chariot race.
This conning station is located on the highest level of the forward superstructure. Open to the sky yet surrounded by bulkheads it has aptly been termed by some DE’s “the bucket.” Its location corresponds to the flying bridge of a 1,200-ton destroyer, or to the director’s location in heavier destroyers. The height of this bridge from the water will give an officer accustomed to four stacker” bridges the impression of conning from a low flying bomber.
The open conning station is a product of practical experience. It comes not from the design of the men behind the desks, but from the convoy lanes of the North Atlantic, the Mediterranean, the English Channel, from the most unpleasant and difficult escort work the war has known. In the late spring and summer of 1941 when our Atlantic destroyer squadrons first came among the British escort vessels in Newfoundland, Greenland, and Ireland they immediately noted their open bridges. Not only did “mad dogs and Englishmen go out in the noonday sun” but apparently they stayed out in the northern cold. It appeared to be a simple case of not knowing enough to come in out of the rain. Whether it was destroyer or sloop, frigate or corvette, they all had the one feature in common, an open bridge.
The U. S. destroyers commenced the actual work of escorting and there followed a reversal of the general opinion on exposed conning stations. The first lesson learned was that despite the glorious warmth of the pilot-house radiators and the protection from seas, the visibility was so poor from inside this station that to conn the ship from here was to invite certain collision. Commanding officers will agree that although they thought the arc of visibility from the pilot-house was sufficient, they forsook this station for searchlight platforms, flying bridges, semaphore stands, did everything but actually climb to the crow’s-nest in order to find a place where they could see the whole picture in making a dock or clearing one. The pilot house as a conning station had taken its place alongside running lights and steady courses in a cabinet labeled “for peace-time use only.” The escort vessel must patrol her sector employing constantly changing courses. There were too many and too large blind sectors for an Officer of the Deck to keep track of everything he needed to see.
The bridge wings proved a far better conning station than the pilot-house. Here the visibility permitted an officer to see everything on his side as far aft as the stern and 20 degrees across the bow. With the Officer of the Deck in one wing and the Junior Officer of the Watch in the other the entire 360 degrees was covered. Still the Officer of the Deck in order to get the opposite side had to cross through the pilot-house from time to time, have a look around and then return.
It dawned on Officers of the Deck then that they were actually worse off than in the ships with open bridges. Here they were out in the open too, yet their bridge wing was much more drafty than an open bridge. Their arc of vision was restricted to at best 210 degrees while the open bridge had 360 degrees. They got very wet, for their bridge wing was lower than an open bridge and consequently took more seas and spray. Here then was the answer to why the four pipe destroyers transferred to the British in 1940 had reappeared not only with wine messes where the linen closets used to be but with conning stations where the fire-control stations were once located on the flying bridge. These 50 destroyers had removed the range finder, raised the canvas screens to chin height, installed the necessary voice tubes to the pilot-house (now the steering station only) and thereby made their open conning bridge. Splinter mattresses surrounding the bridge completed the alteration,
Let us take a look then at the vessel that shares with the submarine the only open bridges to be used by our combatant vessels. The plan view of a Destroyer Escort’s bridge shows it to be very nearly square. Projecting outboard from the after corners are sky lookout platforms each designed for two sky lookouts. The side bulkheads and the after bulkhead are 5 feet high, the bulkheads around the sky lookout stations a foot lower. The forward bulkhead is 6½ feet high. A wooden grating placed against the forward bulkhead runs athwartships the entire width of the bridge. From this position the ship is conned. The forward bulkhead then comes to shoulder height and windshields of shatterproof glass extend up another 2 feet. These shields are in sections about 2 feet wide and may be raised or lowered as desired. In the very center of the bridge is a platform on which a pelorus is mounted. An alidade on this pelorus has 360 degrees of uninterrupted arc. The third raised position of the bridge deck is a platform against the after bulkhead that mounts the range finder. Access to the bridge is by a ladder from the charthouse level that comes up through a booby hatch in the forward starboard corner. There is no wheel, engine-room telegraph, or other ship control device on the bridge. A voice tube in front of the conning officer is his sole communication with the steering station.
To convince an officer that the open bridge has the advantage of visibility and protection from the weather is only half the battle. The real task comes in weaning him away from the wheel and annunciators. The very thought of having his steering station a deck below and completely out of sight fills him with terror. It may be the practice of glancing over the helmsman’s shoulder at the binnacle or simply that officers are accustomed to seeing a wheel spun upon their orders, but whatever it is the open bridge instills a feeling that there is a runaway horse in front of the carriage. These fears are not borne out by fact. Immediately before the conning officer on the forward bulkhead there are a number of instruments making the bulkhead resemble a dash board. A rudder angle indicator shows the exact position of the rudder itself at all times. This is a far better indication than simply seeing that a helmsman is turning the wheel in the right direction or looking at a mechanical indicator on the wheel post that would show the angle applied but would not indicate what the actual result was on the rudder. Two dials contained in a single instrument beside the rudder angle indicator show what the engine-rooms answer to the annunciators. Thus you have a positive indication of engines and rudder even though the controls are not in sight. A pitometer log completes the set of ship control instruments giving the vessel’s speed through the water in knots and keeping a record of the miles traveled. The remaining instruments and dials are of a confidential nature but suffice it to say that the conning officer has at his fingertips every bit of information and control necessary to carry out the mission of his vessel.
The features of the open bridge dealt with thus far have been limited to considerations of surface craft. The greatest single advantage of such a bridge in the present war is found in combating air attack. It is the only type of bridge that enables a conning officer to have a complete view of the air. Without shifting his station in the slightest he may observe aircraft coming from any point of the compass and at any position angle. The sky lookouts are stationed only 12 feet away. The ship may be conned rapidly and accurately yet the twisting and turning will not require the conning officer to move from his control position nor impair his arc of vision.
The majority of our patrol craft are fitted with bridges of this type. Among these are the numerous sizes of subchasers. Mine sweepers also employ the open bridge. The Destroyer Escorts are the first combatant surface vessels to employ this open conn but in the writer’s opinion this is only the beginning. Keep an eye on the destroyers.