Battleship North Carolina

About 65 miles north of Myrtle Beach in Wilmington North Carolina sits one of the best preserved battleships from the second world war, so of course I wanted to go see it. I've never seen a big warship before and this is certainly big. When it was launched in 1941 it was considered the worlds greatest sea weapon. It is 720 feet long and had a crew of over 2300 men.

These are the 3 16" guns which face rearward. Its hard to get a scale but, standing under the guns, you can't touch the barrels. The deck is the original teak. Apparently it never rots, all it needs is to be scrubbed with soapstone to bring the original colour back. As part of the self-guided tour, you can climb into the gun turret and sit in the seats and aim the guns (they don't really move though; wouldn't that be cool). The turret's the size of a small house and about 20 men fought in there. Another 40 worked below the guns feeding up the shells and powder.

This is the front deck of the battleship. Carmen is standing behind one of the 2 anchors. It would take 2 men to lift one of the anchor chain links. Behind her are the 2 16" front turrets. They were aimed by analog computers and were so accurate they could hit a target over 26 miles away while in rough seas. That system is still used in some ships because the new computers don't perform any better.

This is the view from the captains window on the bridge. This ship fought in every major sea battle in the pacific and was torpedoed in 1942, but quick repairs saved it. Although it was repeatedly attacked by Kamikaze planes the only other battle damage was when another American ship shot it while shooting at a diving airplane. 3 men were killed then. After going through the whole war, only 10 men died on it, mostly in accidents.

Its hard to imagine what it must have been like to man a gun like this during a Kamikaze attack. The ship was credited with shooting down over 40 planes and shared over 100 more with other ships. The ship had over 130 guns for air protection.
Although we didn't take any pictures of the interior, the services required to feed and house 2300 men was amazing. 3 meals a day for that many men as well as sleeping quarters, toilets, showers and laundry was crammed into the smallest spaces. Interior pictures didn't do it justice because there were hundreds of small sleeping quarters and washrooms. Dozens of eating areas and kitchens were located all over the ship. There was 1 toilet for every 200 men; makes you wonder what a diarrhea outbreak would look like.