2023 southeast swing

Whenever I’ve thought of the city of Wilmington, I’ve thought of the battleship moored there that we could visit. Today’s the day. As we got onboard, we realized that we already have been on a battleship, the USS Alabama in Mobile (2019 southwest swing, gulf coast – part 7: WWII battleship). The two ships are familiar, so in this post we’re going to show you what caught our interest as we walked around and went up and down narrow stairs.

While driving to Wilmington, we passed by the gate exit to Camp Lejeune. Barney was stationed at New River Air Station that’s part of LeJeune. Such memories.

Commissioned on April 9, 1941,the North Carolina was considered to be the world’s greatest sea weapon. (The USS Alabama was built later so was even more advanced.) Constructed after a nearly 2-decade hiatus, she had the finest engineering and technology available and was often referred to as “Showboat.”

This battleship was involved in every major WWII naval offensive in the Pacific Theater, earning 15 battle stars and becoming the most decorated American battleship of WWII. Here are some more stats:

Has about 15,000 tons of steel armor place, about 42% of her weight
Could carry almost 2 million gallons of fuel oil and averaged 166 gallons per mile and moved 32 feet per gallon
produced 8.4 megawatts of electricity, enough to power a small town of 6500 people
all 9 captains, graduates from the U.S. Naval Academy, became admirals
Has three 16-inch gun turrets and a surviving Kingfisher aircraft

The tidal water around the ship was changing so much and starting to create problems for the ship that this barrier was built around the ship that contains fresh water that can be monitored and controlled.

inside

While sailors usually had a bunk, when the battleship was used as a troop carrier, these hammocks could be hung at night in the areas for eating.

Every space is filled with what’s needed: ship equipment with dining area.

Can you believe this recipe for pie dough? Can’t imagine making this much.

Barney doesn’t remember a cobbler shop being onboard any of the ships he was on. Work here was free except for repairs of half soles and rubber and leather heels.

The ship’s garbage was ground up for disposal, mixed with water, and then released into the ocean over the ship’s propellers. Why? To avoid leaving a floating trail that the enemy could follow. Smart.

When a darkened ship was needed, the designers in the 1930s used blue globes.

In July 1942, the change was made for a shielded red lens that would “cut off all direct rays and provide only reflected light which was known to have minimum visibility at a distance.” But that design didn’t work for normal ship operation. The solution was to replace the blue globes with an unshielded red steam-tight globe. When the red was too bright, such as where the sailors were sleeping, the globe could be painted.

Here’s an example of an unshielded red steam-tight globe.

While the USS Alabama that we’ve previously seen in a 2019 trip had a fire control system that controlled the guns, here’s an earlier version of the system.

The system could aim and fire the 5-inch and 16-inch guns. The various groups of equipment were electrically linked and could function together or separately.

Here’s one of the rooms with its early “computers.”

outside

These battle ribbons and kill board show how significant this ship was during war time.

With each battleship was a Kingfisher plane that was the ship’s eyes in the sky.

Per Wikipedia: “The Vought OS2U Kingfisher is an American catapult-launched observation floatplane. It was a compact mid-wing monoplane, with a large central float and small stabilizing floats. Performance was modest because of its low-powered engine. The OS2U could also operate on fixed, wheeled, taildragger landing gear. “

It was the “main shipboard observation seaplane used by the U.S. Navy during WWII, and 1,519 of the aircraft were built. It served on battleships and cruisers of the U.S. Navy, with the U.S. Marine Corps in Marine Scouting Squadron Three (VMS-3), with the U.S. Coast Guard at coastal air stations; at sea with the Fleet Air Arm of the Royal Navy; with the Soviet Navy; and with the Royal Australian Navy.