In this episode:
battleship North Carolina— the showboat of naval warfare.
Naval Legends: USS North Carolina
USS North Carolina and USS Washington
were the first US battleships commissioned after 1923.
First, the Washington Naval Treaty and then the London Naval Treaty
hampered the construction of new battleships in the United States
for almost 15 years.
By 1937, the engineers of the US Navy
had defined the main specifications of a modern American battleship…
The main requirement was for those battleships
to be able to pass through the Panama Canal.
So the width of the Panama Canal defined the parameters of US battleships.
…Apart from that, the 1930s saw the extensive use
of brand new technological advances.
Nevertheless, they needed to build a battleship
able to win supremacy in a naval theater of war.
Don't forget that at that time
battleships were considered the main type of warship.
So, they needed to be powerful, have good speed,
and carry good artillery armament.
The design process for North Carolina began as early as 1928
and took nine years to complete.
In the following four years, the battleship was constructed and tested.
Numerous changes were made to its design
and serious malfunctions were eliminated.
When the ship was completed, a serious problem surfaced—
her hull vibrated very strongly at certain speeds.
They installed new propellers and launched her again.
Then, a trial run, another one, vibration again, and back to the shipyard.
The ship often passed by New York's embankments.
As if she was showing off. New-Yorkers came in crowds to watch her.
That's how the ship got the nickname "showboat."
Finally, they managed to solve the vibration issue,
and on April 1941, North Carolina was commissioned
and became the main warship of the United States of America.
Main specifications of battleship North Carolina
Length: 222 meters. Beam: almost 32 meters. Draft: more than 9.5 m.
Total displacement: 44,800 tons.
Main power plant: four compartments with two Babcock & Wilcox boilers each
and a set of General Electric steam turbines.
Power: 121,000 hp. Cruising range: 17,450 miles at 15 knots.
Armor. Main armor belt: up to 305 mm. Main armored deck: 140 mm.
Turrets were protected with armor from 178 mm to 406 mm thick.
Conning tower: from 178 to 406 mm.
Armament. Primary armament:
Nine Mark 6 guns with a caliber of 406 mm, installed in three triple turrets.
This whole ship was designed
to be a stable firing platform for these 16-inch guns.
These guns could fire every 30 seconds.
So, imagine nine shells each weighing 2,700 pounds.
Think about that—it’s about the weight of a small car—
coming out of these barrels every 30 seconds
and travelling down range 20 miles to a target.
Designed to go against another battleship
and penetrate that battleship’s armor and then explode inside.
Dual-purpose artillery: ten coaxial Mark 12 mounts, caliber 127 mm (10x2).
And they could fire against surface targets, that is shore bombardment,
enemy ships, and the most important role they had,
for the North Carolina was in the antiaircraft role.
Battleship North Carolina was credited with shooting down 24 airplanes.
Those are, of course, only the confirmed kills.
Anti-aircraft artillery:
four quadruple mounts, caliber 28 mm, twelve machine guns, caliber 12.7 mm.
When North Carolina was in Pearl Harbor for repairs in September of 1942,
the 1.1-inch systems were replaced by what I’m sitting in now—
the Bofors 40-mm quad mount.
50-caliber machine guns were replaced by Oerlikon 20-mm cannon.
Air group: three Vought OS2U Kingfisher aircraft
The battleships of World War II
would carry these planes for a number of missions.
One of them would be to search out the enemy,
also to observe the fall of shot from the artillery,
from the naval gunfire and to adjust fire as necessary to hit the target.
They would also, of course, search for submarines,
and should they find one, they could attack it.
But they also played a big role in World War II
on the battleship North Carolina as rescuers of downed pilots.
Initially, North Carolina was designed to be armed with 14-inch guns.
The decision to increase the caliber was made at the last moment—
intelligence reports said that Japan was building some super battleships.
Moreover, it turned out
that three turrets with 16-inch guns would fit perfectly
instead of the 14-inch turrets presupposed by the initial design.
As a result, this decision became a real breakthrough for US shipbuilding.
47 men inside the gun house of that turret.
It’s kind of hard to believe because it’s small.
Now this turret goes all the way down to the keel of the ship.
That armored cylinder that the turret sits on is called a barbette.
In the whole gun mount there would be 177 men,
which for three turrets makes up…
that’s almost 600 guys making up almost a third of the crew.
The battleship was also fitted with two radars,
which controlled the primary armament's fire.
This main battery director being one of the highest points in the ship—
the highest manned points in the ship—
was subject to all the pitching and rolling of the ship.
So, in weather prediction at the time,
hurricanes could not be predicted ahead of time,
so, this ship found itself in hurricanes
and there are accounts of water breaching the ship,
reaching as high as the platform at the 010 level, one level below us.
And those men who were lookouts
were subject to quite severe weather conditions.
And you can imagine if you’re 11 stories above the main deck,
what momentum you’re being subjected to, as you’re being pitched and rolled.
The information from this center was sent to the artillery calculator
and the automatic firing device—
an analog computing device, a predecessor of modern-day computers.
The purpose of this computer was to put a projectile,
which could weigh up to 2,500 pounds 25 miles away.
It’s a dumb projectile, so it has to know where it’s going when it leaves the ship.
And these computers calculate approximately 26 variables.
Anything from barrel wear, wind speed, Coriolis effect.
Our ship might be moving in one direction, the target ship in another direction.
So, the computer is tracking where the future target will be.
The computer took seven men to operate, each computer.
There would be up to 72 men in these rooms.
The rooms are air-conditioned for the equipment, not for the men.
We’re told it would be up to 90 degrees and 90% humidity in these rooms,
so it was very difficult conditions,
but these were the battle stations for all those men.
By April 1944, North Carolina was equipped with radiolocation systems,
including radars for discovering air and surface targets.
Welcome to the USS North Carolina Combat Information Center.
Its primary function during an engagement would have been to keep track
of all air and surface contacts around the battleship during the war.
There were two search radars located in this compartment for that purpose.
Behind you was the Main Airsearch Radar called SK2.
It could track aircraft depending on the weather at about 100-110 miles.
And we have the SG surface search radar located up forward here,
which could see a large warship,
such as a battleship or an aircraft carrier at about 25-30 miles.
Service on the battleship did not stop even for a minute
and that required a lot of effort from her crew.
At the same time, living conditions on North Carolina were far from comfortable.
At the height of the War in the Pacific,
there were as many as 2,300 men aboard this ship.
So, you might be saying, “Where did they all sleep?”
Well, they slept in berthing compartments like this one that we’re in now.
This is a quite typical berthing area.
There happened to be 80 men in this particular space.
The ceilings are quite high and the racks, as we call them in the navy,
the beds, the racks are stacked as much as five high.
You have to be a real contortionist to get into the top rack.
These berthing areas are hot, they’re crowded,
they afford almost no privacy as you can see.
So, there was a constant flow of activity in here.
Constantly guys getting in and out of their beds, using the bathroom,
taking showers, getting dressed for work, coming off of work.
So, as I said, crowded, hot in the South Pacific in 1942.
Ambient temperatures as high as 95-100 degrees.
This was what life was like for a sailor in World War II on a battleship.
It was hard life.
On September 3, 1941,
the battleship left for her shakedown cruise to the Caribbean Sea.
After nine months of intense exercises and artillery practice,
North Carolina set sail from Norfolk to the Pacific Ocean,
where, by that time, the strategic situation had dramatically changed.
Aircraft carriers became the main warship.
As a result, North Carolina and similar ships, her sisterships,
became auxiliary ships for aircraft carriers.
And they completed their primary combat missions as part of carrier groups.
On August 7, 1942,
the United States began the landing operation on the Guadalcanal Island.
The Japanese command concentrated their forces at the Truk base,
preparing a strike against the US fleet near the Solomon Islands.
On August 24, the Japanese launched about 80 planes at the US ships.
North Carolina was escorting USS Enterprise.
The ships formed a circle around the aircraft carrier
with a diameter of about 2 miles.
It was the first battle for North Carolina—
at 17:12, her dual-purpose guns
opened fire on the Japanese bombers attacking Enterprise.
The fire was so powerful that a dense umbrella of exploding shells
covered Enterprise and the Japanese aircraft had to turn away.
Then the ship was attacked by torpedo bombers from different directions.
Repelling the enemy aircraft,
North Carolina unleashed such a massive barrage from her dual-purpose guns,
antiaircraft cannons, and machine guns that it astounded her allies as well.
Admiral Kinkaid from Enterprise asked the battleship's captain, "Are you afire?"
They decided that the battleship was ablaze from enemy hits.
For seven minutes of the battle,
which eyewitnesses called nothing less than "seven minutes of hell,"
North Carolina shot down from seven to fourteen aircraft.
The dual-purpose artillery proved itself during this engagement
and in the following operations.
And they had a round called the AA CR—the antiaircraft common round.
It was a round specifically designed to do damage to aircraft.
We also had a secret weapon in World War II,
we had a proximity fuse on some of our antiaircraft rounds.
They had a teeny little radar system inside the nose cone of the shell,
which would detect proximity to an enemy aircraft
and detonate without actually having to hit the aircraft.
And these were very-very effective.
Of course, it was top secret, even the sailors loading and shooting the guns
didn’t know what they were shooting.
It was a well-kept secret until after the war.
Since her arrival in the Pacific theater of war
and until the last missions in July 1945,
North Carolina never engaged enemy battleships in a direct artillery duel.
However, the battleship's artillery was used
in all major operations of World War II in that region.
Now, North Carolina in her history
never got a chance to go up against an enemy battleship,
but she did fire almost 2,500 rounds against shore targets
as part of an amphibious assault.
She was part of nine shore bombardments against the Japanese held islands
including mainland Japan.
Near the end of the war,
the Japanese were suffering defeats in one battle after another
and losing ships and aircraft, so they resorted to the kamikaze tactic.
We’re standing on the signal bridge of battleship North Carolina.
It was on this very spot in 1945, that one of the most tragic events
of World War II in the history of this battleship took place.
And on that day 6 April, 1945,
North Carolina was steaming in company with a US destroyer off its port quarter.
So North Carolina was vigorously trying to defend herself
from this kamikaze attack, as was the US destroyer.
The kamikaze passed over the top of North Carolina
and crashed into the sea on her starboard side.
That US destroyer was tracking that kamikaze
and unfortunately it did not cease fire soon enough.
So, one of its last rounds a 5-inch shell actually impacted this 5-inch director.
And there were 15 men inside that director.
Three of them were killed instantly;
the other men in there were severely injured.
As were others, standing around on the deck.
It was a very tragic example of friendly fire.
On September 2, 1945, Japan signed its surrender aboard USS Missouri;
the next day, North Carolina set sail back to the United States.
On June 27, 1947, the battleship was officially inactivated
and put into reserve in the state of New Jersey—
the ship accomplished her task.
Escorting aircraft carriers became their primary mission.
Those were battleships
that bore the main weight of attacks from the Japanese aviation,
both carrier-borne and land-based, and Japanese kamikaze.
Thanks to battleships, aircraft carriers could complete their primary mission,
which was to deliver strikes on the enemy.
So this was their purpose—to escort and defend carrier task forces.
North Carolina remained in reserve for 13 years;
then her name was stricken from the Naval Register.
After that, she was purchased by her namesake state for 250,000 US dollars.
Two sea-going tugs helped the battleship
navigate to the city of Wilmington, North Carolina,
where on April 29, 1962, she was opened as a war memorial.