A Battleship, Aground, Live Fire, All Yellow

Well, if that's not a great title???

We have had an interesting few days. Tied up at Port City Marina in Wilmington, NC, we had a day to spend as we waited out the wind and the USS North Carolina promised to entertain us for a few hours. Although I built a pretty good Revell model of a battleship as a kid and both the Admiral and I have been on aircraft carriers and submarines, neither of us had ever been on a true battleship. Wow, nearly 85 years old, the USS North Carolina nonetheless impressed.

Displacing 45,000 long tons with a beam of 110 feet, her length of 730 feet (nearly two and a half football fields) had me standing on her bridge trying to imagine what it would be like to be her skipper or helmsman. At my age I almost need binoculars to see her bow!

Her guns impress: Her primary battery included nine 16-inch/45 caliber guns in three turrets; her secondary battery had twenty 5-inch/38 caliber guns in ten twin mounts; and her anti-aircraft complement was sixteen 1.1-inch anti-aircraft guns and twelve 50 caliber machine guns.

But, when you start to think about it, procuring, loading, storing, and then supplying the guns with powder and projectiles--all without blowing up the ship, was no small task. Powder was stored in silk bags in metal casks in the bowels of the ship as were the projectiles. There were special elevators to load them on board and conveyors to carry them to each of the batteries when needed for fighting.

But wait, it gets more complicated. The ship, commissioned in 1941, had an incredibly complex system supporting each weapon that compensated for the ship's pitch, roll, and yaw, the elevation or altitude of the target, the target's speed and trajectory, and, of course, its distance. The ship served in every major Pacific theater operation in WW II and won over 15 battle medals before being decommissioned in 1947. It's systems and complement of 144 officers and 2195 crew were certainly effective.

Another feature of the battleship that intrigued me were her two Kingfisher float planes. A crane hoisted them over the side on a sled on which it also recovered them. The Kingfisher flew a wide variety of missions--scouting and triangulating targets for the ship, dropping torpedoes, taking officers to meetings, carrying mail ashore, etc.

And I get anchor envy when I look at one of the two anchors on her foredeck! But, with her size and displacement, you'd want holding power on any type of bottom.

The photo below of the USS North Carolina's port side and the water she's lying in (she draws 33 feet) reminds me to mention the pollen we've been dealing with the last ten days. While our white pines in Maine drop their pollen in late May and early June, the pines here are in full pollination mode. Everything is YELLOW: decks, windows, the dinghy, fire extinguishers, cushions, but also the dock, sidewalks, streets--you name it. Kachooo!

Ok, if you're a casual reader, you won't get this far. But for my loyal followers, I must make a confession. I made a serious mistake today. We were overtaking a small boat going slowly and I focused on the boat and getting by it without unduly rocking it. Once clear of it, I throttled up. . . Only to run firmly aground. In focusing on the boat, I lost track of a very obvious channel marker of which I was most definitely on the wrong side. Fortunately the bottom was sand and the tide was coming in. The guys in the little boat who had also gone on the wrong side of the marker ferried my anchor out into the channel for me and I kedged with it whenever a boat making significant waves went by. Meanwhile (at my request) the Admiral called Towboat US. About the time TB US got there (an hour plus after going aground) I was giving our windless a good work out kedging off. I got us off and TB US stood by while I did a quick sea trial—no leaks, no vibrations and normal engine temperature. Thank goodness.

After our "incident", we had another 2+ hour cruise at a good clip with all systems ok and are now anchored in 25 knots of wind at Mile Hammock Bay in the heart of the US Marine's Camp LaJeune. Mile Hammock Bay is touted as a must stop for Loopers. Maybe we’re spoiled but we don’t understand that billing. BTW, I did call the range office at Camp LaJeune to be sure there were no live fire exercises here today. We can hear detonations in the distance but thankfully there are no projectiles whizzing overhead.

PS: There are three types of sailors: those who have been aground, those who will go aground, and those who lie.