Speaking of the military both the Carpathia and Californian were sunk by U-boats a few years later during the war, it’s a little ironic that both of Titanic’s rescuers were living on borrowed time as well.
There’s this.. Which I just found on google, but only had time to skim the abstract.
Until 5 minutes ago, I don’t recall seeing it in print beyond “theory & speculation,” but I do seem to remember a T.V. Special (A & E, maybe?) that took a smallish piece of Titanic’s steel (I don’t remember whether it was a piece of hull steel, or from a rivet), cubed and cleaned it, set it in a frame, chilled it down to 32* F, and struck it with a hammer (mounted on a kind of pivot).
IIRC, it shattered like glass. Now, whether this is an accurate, scientific test or not, you’ll have to get a metallurgist to chime in.
But for my part, it looked pretty convincing.
But the article linked by the OP say
Which, of course, is bunk. That locker could’ve been pried open any number of ways or the locking mechanism picked and/or popped.
This is true, which I think is indicative of the blase attitude (arrogant overconfidence in technology?) that was prevalent at the time, and in no short supply on the Titanic.
Didn’t the Liberty ships on the Murmansk convoys have similar issues to this?
From here
Maybe. But that article does not seem to state that the liberty ships broke apart because of the cold water making the steel brittle.
No cite, but when I was in Navy Nuclear Power School, the Liberty ships were mentioned as examples of brittle fracture when we studied the subject in the materials course.