USS North Carolina - real life tour

[Chainsaw_Ecosse]

Hi All,

Not much of a forumite I'm afraid, but read a lot of what goes on.  Thought I'd share with you a trip I had a couple years round the USS North Carolina.  She's based in Wilmington NC and I popped down one weekend when I was out on business and had time to kill.  The official website is here and the wikipedia 'info' is here. Look forward to seeing her in game!

 

I had a similar visit out to USS Hornet (Essex class CV) which I'll try and share later.  Anyway, on with the show!

 

She is a nice looking ship

 

 

Starting at the stern looking at the rear turret

 

 

Rear AA mounts and Kingfisher scout plane

 

 

From the bow showing the AA armament and the front 2 16 inch triple turrets.  

 

 

Armament on this thing was pretty impressive;

• 9 × 16inch in 3 triple turrets
• 20 × 5 in (130 mm) secondaries
• 15 quad 40mm antiaircraft guns
• 46 single 20mm cannon

 

View aft showing the manual rangefinders on the main guns and also the 5inch secondarys

 

 

A few of the 20mms

 

 

and a few more   Torpedo bombers beware!

 

 

Rangefinding and firecontrol was normally done from these  (if you're reading this Jingles, look the signal locker!)

 

 

and the information fed into the firecontrol room here

 

 

Too many pics so please check out part 2 where we go inside the 16 inch turrets

[Chainsaw_Ecosse]

 

Ok Part 2!

 

The inside of one of the turrets.  The big tube you see here is the manual rangefinding periscope, you saw the outside of this on one of the above pics.  You can see the eyepieces.  This section of the turret was separate from the part with the breeches.

 

 

These coincidence rangefinders worked by splitting the image in some way and then you adjusted the image until it lined up and this gave you the range.  A precision instrument, imagine the vibration this would experience when the guns fired!

 

 

You get these on artillery pieces and even tanks, see the T29 on WoT as a good example.  So have posted too many images so will need to split this into 2 sections.

 

The thing I found most fascinating about the ship was the way the main guns were fed.  There was a twin requirement of making sure you could reload the guns as fast as possible but also to protect the shells and propellant from enemy fire.  Locking it all up in a steel box wont help your reload time!  The solution was not perfect but a good compromise!

 

In principle it is something like this (apologies, I can't recall who initially shared this)

 

Starting at the breech end, shell comes up the shell ramp flattens out and the round is rammed into the breech.  The thing you can see with the threads on it to the right of the shell is the breech screw or plug which screws into the breech block before it goes boom!

 

 

Once the shell is in, the door opens on the left and the charges roll out onto the shell ramp.  There are 2 trays of 3 charges

 

 

These are then rammed home and the breech closed and the gun flagged as ready to fire

 

 

The whole turret or barbette is very heavily armoured to keep rounds out or if penetrated, to keep the blast from getting to other parts of the ship.  If we now go below decks, the barbette looks like this

 

 

Look at the thickness of the armour here.  Remember when you get a citadel hit, this is the kinda thing you are going through, hence the need for AP!!!  The whole barbette rotates all the way down into the deck so that you don't need to realign the turrets for every reload.  This is the view down from the shell deck, note the chute on the right here you'll see more of that soon.

 

 

Now down to part 3 showing how the ammo gets to the gun

[Chainsaw_Ecosse]

And lastly

 

Some shells on the shell deck, the hole is for bringing up more into this 'ready' area

 

 

They are then manhandled or craned into the hoists to be taken up to the gun.

 

 

The powder charges come from here, the drums are 'flash' proof and the charges are put on the conveyor and slid along

 

 

The charges then come out of the charge room (behind the silver wall) into a staging area before being jacked through into the barbette proper.  Again all this to prevent against flashes igniting the charges prematurely and igniting the magazine.

 

 

Inside the barbette, the rounds are jacked through and 6 of them are placed in the trays to be hoisted up to the gun

 

 

The 5 inch mount are very similar, you can see the hoist and also the charge room here, not as well separated as the 16 inch magazine

 

 

Hope this was ok and not too boring and hopefully it gave you some insight into what happens below decks while you are waiting for that reticle to turn green and unleash hell on your enemies!  I apologize for any errors in terminology etc, I'm not a Navy man

 

Am loving the game so far and I look forward to seeing you all on the water (through a green reticule!)

 

Cheers,

 

Alan

[0ptimusPrime]

gj m8....very impressive!

[Shirio]

thx for the view!

 

[KptStrzyga]

[UlleChamp]

Damn that looks cool

 

[SteelF1st]

Gr8 Pictures.