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The deck drawings seen here are retracings of the USS Spangler DE-696, General Deck Plans, made available by Robert Jack, Capt. Ret. Robert (Bob) reported aboard the Spangler as a Prospective DC Assistant in September 1955 and served as the Engineering Officer in 1957 and 1958.

To begin viewing the drawings either select a deck area from the ship's vertical profile by clicking on an identifier name (i.e. Open Bridge, Navigation Bridge, Superstructure, and etc.); or, scroll further down the page and select a specific deck plan. Either option works very much the same.

A web page opens at that point displaying (at the top) a scaled-down view of the deck selected and at the bottom significantly expanded views of the same deck -- divided into three sections (foreship, midship and aft). The reason for the later is to accommodate visitors lacking wide screen monitors.

Pause a moment as you browse the Navigation Bridge, Superstructure and Main Decks areas to see if the drawings switch to a slightly different deck layout after a few seconds. If all is working well you should see layouts reflecting how the ship appeared for three different time periods: 1943-1946, 1946-1955 and 1955-1958, depending on what changes took place in a specific deck area.

Photographs of the Spangler reveals that the ship's appearance changed noticeably over the years, with the most obvious being the extension in 1950 of the Sonar Hut on the Open Bridge. But equally important were the changes in armament (much more on this later), and those are illustrated using animations of how the ship appeared at different time periods! If you are using a dial-up modem, the cycle between drawings (especially the animations) might make it appear that a drawing is missing for a few moments, so a little patience is needed there.

Index Button

Several of the pages include an "Index" option near the top of the page. Actually it's located immediately below the deck layout. So you can't miss it! Activating it (clicking on it) opens a pop-up window displaying descriptions for the many abbreviations and deck features you'll see on the plan (spaces in which the title was too lengthy for the drawing, desks, sleeping berths, and etc.) . Selecting the arrow to the left of the word "Index" when you are done with it returns you back to the full deck display.

Zoom & Photo Buttons

and

Almost all of the deck drawings include zoom and photo buttons (shown above). These are "hotspots" or special tags that can be selected (clicked on) to display additional information (photos, text, spatial enlargement, etc). The zoom button enables you to enlarge an area for closer view. Whereas the photo button brings up a display of one or more photos depicting scenes of the nearby area. Clicking on either of the two buttons above will give you an example of how this works.

Unfortunately, because of differences in internet browsers, hotspots will not work for all users. So a second option was created to accommodate this situation. Note the number on the face of a button. It refers to a specific hotspot among (possibly) several on the web page. If a hotspot fails to work when you click on it, the best option would be to look around on the web page for the the words "Photo Hotspots: 1 2 3" or "Zoom Hotspots: 1 2 3," then select the number corresponding to the hotspot of interest..

Engine and Fire Rooms

Drawings for the engine and fire rooms provide only a "very" general layout of equipment in the respective areas. So other than seeing a name of a piece of machinery the areas are not going to look a whole lot like folks recall. The information on equipment arrangements came from three sources: a hand sketch drawn by Bill Rosen while serving as an Ensign aboard the Spangler in 1957; a publication titled, "Engineering Casualty Control Manual for DE's," made available by Bill Rosen; and several pages from a publication titled, "Instructions GEI-16259B, Turbine-Electric Propulsion Equipment, US Navy DE51 Class Escort Vessels, Nov. 1943, made available by Bob Jack. Bill's hand drawing was done as part of a CruDesPac Officer's General Information Course he took shortly after reporting aboard the Spangler in 1957.

General Overview

As noted above the deck drawings are not photo images of the actual blue-prints, in other words the General Deck Plans published in Bay City, Michigan in 1943. Rather they are colored retracings of those original plans. They include all of the updates made periodically over the years as the ship underwent overhauls, first at the Todd Ship Yards in San Pedro, CA in late 1945, next at Mare Island Navy Shipyard in mid 1947, then at the Pearl Harbor Navy Ship Yard in late 1948, and later in the San Francisco Navy Shipyards in late 1950). If any additional modifications were made they likely took place when the Spangler underwent a major overhaul in Pearl Harbor in early 1955. Unfortunately, that information isn't available to the website yet, but might well be included on plans presently known to be available through the National Archives Records Administration Center in College Park, Maryland. Images of the deck plans in the Archive are reportedly up-to-date through 1958.

Please keep in mind, the deck plans are "very" general in layout. By this is meant that the drawings do not display a lot of fine detail -- certainly not to the extent seen for the deck plans on the USS Slater DE-766 website. If you haven't yet visited the the Slater Museum at http://www.ussslater.org, then please take a moment and do so, but please be sure to use your back button and return when done. The museum has by far the finest detailed set of deck plans you'll find anywhere on the internet. In many respects, though, other than for all the detail, the general deck plans for the Spangler are not substantially different. A number of differences exist, however, and these make it worthwhile to display the Spangler's deck plans here.

Additional photo buttons will be added to the deck drawings as time permits. Thanks to a lot of you we have a fairly sizable collection of photos that reveal various features of the ship. These can be very helpful in bringing to life different areas or providing pictures of what equipment and machinery would have looked like.

The viewing options mentioned earlier (1943-1946, 1946-1955, and 1955-1958 stems from changes in the ship's appearance over the years. The removal in 1946 of the aft and forward 3"/50 cal. battery and replacement with 5"/38 cal. mounts is one example. Another is the addition in 1950 of the large asdic shack forward of the bridge area. And yet another is the removal of all 20 mm gun batteries in 1955. Unfortunately, the deck plans available at this point only reflect the appearance of the Spangler as it existed in 1950. But we have enough photos available to show how the ship looked at other times.

Appreciation is extended to Bob Jack, Bill Rosen, Phil Eng and all of you that have helped in any way, or will help in the future, in making the Spangler's deck plans an interesting place.

If you have questions concerning the deck drawings or would like to contribute in anyway or comment please Email me (dorwgd@cox.net).