Battleships

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Just remembered another great tour I've taken. http://www.lanevictory.org/

If you're ever in San Pedro, CA, tour the Lane Victory.
I toured her when she was in San Diego, and this was by far the best ship tour I've been on. The crew is great, and the ship is wide open to visitors. I spent an hour talking to an old merchant marine about how to operate the 5 inch gun, and what is wrong with politicians these days. Then I went down to the engine room, and spent another hour or two being instructed on the operation of a steam turbine by a grizzly engineer. The ship is fully operational, and is crewed by retired navy and merchant marines. Basically, its a big playground for these guys. It was great fun :)
They also do cruises from San Pedro, and let you go up and visit the bridge and engine room during the cruise. They serve a nice lunch, have live music, and have mock air attacks from vintage aircraft.
 
When we toured the Wisconsin, we were told that the reason visitors are confined to the main deck only is because the ship is actually still U.S. Navy property, and is kept in condition to be recommissioned and put on active duty again. Given the Tomahawk launchers and all the other remodeling done to her, I can understand why. We've been aboard on several trips to Norfolk; on one of them the Coast Guard bark Eagle was in port, and we really enjoyed that visit- she was built for the German navy, but became a prize of war.
 
When I was about 10 I toured the Missouri. She was in LA on her way to Pearl Harbor. Very cool. I was entranced by the huge deck guns. Never been the same since. ;)
 
I love touring naval ships, of any age or type. I think my favorite part is the smell, they invariably are permeated by a unique mixture of the smells of oil and paint. That smell always resurrects memories from when I was a very small child, going to see my Dad aboard the submarine tender Canopus.
I've seen the North Carolina several times, never taken the time to go aboard. Perhaps this summer, my brother is probably going to be moving to the Wilmington area so I'm sure I'll be spending more time there. I also toured the Yorktown at Patriot's Point in Charleston back around 1996.

By far the ships I have spent the most time on are the guided missile cruiser USS Little Rock (CL-92, later CLG-4), the destroyer USS The Sullivans (DD-537) and the submarine USS Croaker (SS-246, later SSK-246).

These three ships are located at the Buffalo and Erie County Naval & Military Park, in downtown Buffalo, right near where Lake Erie end and the Niagara River begins. (Don't worry, the water is calm. The Falls are a good 25 miles upstream.) This is the largest inland park of its kind in the US.

The Little Rock was a heavy cruiser in WWII, about 600-700 feet long, that was upgraded in the 60s with a launcher and radar systems for giant SAM's, I can't remember what they were but they had to have been 40 feet long. The Sullivans is a rather famous ship, named after the five Sullivan brothers who perished on the USS Indianopolis. The ship was featured in the movie about the brothers. The Croaker was a WWII submarine which was later updated with a new "sail"-type conning tower and other gear to make it one of the early-generation hunter-killer subs.

When I was younger we would do a weekend sleepover (in the enlisted racks) on the Little Rock every year with the Boy Scouts. We would maintain "fire watches" throughout the night (with the help of real Navy Coffee for the older guys and real "bug juice" for the younger.) In the morning we had the run of the park, that early it was usually pretty empty. I remember the rotator and elevation cranks still worked on the 20mm AA emplacements on the Sullivans, you could climb up there and swing it around, take aim on the downtown buildings, it was great.

Besides the ships, the Park also boasted nice examples of the F86 Sabre, F-101 Voodoo, P-39 Airacobra, M48 tank, a PT Boat, and a host of other exhibits. I highly recommend it for any naval or military history fan that is going to be travelling to or near Buffalo. (Hint: Do it in the summer.)
 
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^^ I remember the smell too! Many trips to the Intrepid in NYC. I remember aiming the .50 cals at the city and boats on the Hudson too heh

They also have a submarine and destroyer I think. The sub has one of the earliest nuclear cruise missiles on board. Wish I had a more enthusiastic tour guide the last time I went though, he basically just read a script and rushed us through.
 
Probably the coolest thing I have ever gotten to do was go out to an aircraft carrier during training, just before the start of the war in Iraq. I don't think I will ever be able to tour a ship after that, it just won't equal it.

Only spent 24 hours onboard, but it was a blast getting to photograph the ship, the crewmen, and the airops.

Not to mention the butt kicking that is the catapult launch. :what:

I.G.B.
 
Not sure how they all came to be where they are but back in the 60's (or was it the late 50's) when they were about to scrape the NC there was a big fund raiser at school to buy her. I gave about every cent I had on the chance I might get to see her someday.

Either the year they pulled her in at Wilmington or the following one I went aboard. Same year I think. Things were very "temporary". You could go some places and not others but you could go a lot more places then than you can now. Amazing and amazingly smelly.
Alot of the AA would crank then but its locked now.

What a deal we got.

On another note I heard today someone located one of the Japanese I 400 class subs near Hawaii. On the bottom of course. I am hoping Nat. Geo. will dive on it if it's not too deep or rusted. Remarkable boats. Giant, different, doomsday boats.

S-
 
The three top ones would be the berthing area that's right below the #2 arresting cable. Also, there are two work areas that I would love to see again. The first is on the port side aft two decks above where the laundry room was and the second is right off the flight deck. It's midship port side right were the landing lights are. There are two dead end compartments in there. One was used by the blue shirts and the other was used by my squadron for the plane captains. A lot of history for me in those areas.
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Same thing for us on Coral Sea Rock... I took what little of the Midway tour I could a couple of weeks ago. Ended up being a "partial" tour guide to a bunch of folks from Phillips- They had no idea about the flight deck, so I kinda walked 'em through a normal deck op from launch to recovery. They just could not get over lauching in 250 feet and recovering in 400+ feet. On the Coral Sea, our compartment would get up to about 130 degrees because of the steam leaks- I spent many a night in the chain locker at the base of the island, chain bags aren't a bad bed after about a week of rolling ops :rolleyes:

I was lucky enough to get onboard USS New Jersey when she was still an active ship of the line- VERY impressive!!! :D
 
I love touring naval ships, of any age or type. I think my favorite part is the smell, they invariably are permeated by a unique mixture of the smells of oil and paint.
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Exactly! I love touring old warships for that very reason, well, and of course all the history associated with it. Something about the common things such as smell, sight and touch of these historic treasures makes the history behind them more real to me than any book could ever do-as much as I love books.

I first had a tour aboard the USS North Carolina when I was a boy, and have been on her numerous times since. (At the grand old age of 8, I "manned" one of her 40mm guns. Moving it around and looking though the site just as the men who used that very weapon to shoot at Japanese dive bombers did gave me more of a history lesson than did much of my public school education.)

They were doing some restoration work to her the last time I was there a couple years ago, and were selling pieces of her original teak decking (2+ inches thick!) that they were having to replace to help raise money for it. I of course bought one, and I picked out one that had a nice gauge in it because it makes it that much more interesting to me: what caused it-a dropped box of anti-aircraft shells during an attack? A piece of shrapnel? A clumsy seaman? Who knows. Regardless however, it's that very real piece of history that was 'been there-done that' that I can hold in my hands that exemplifies why I love history to begin with-real men like me and you actually did and experienced those things, and in some small way though them, I can get a bit closer to knowing, experiencing and appreciating it all for what it is(was) moreso than any other medium.

Chris
 
I've been aboard the Iowa when they were active. Love them.

If you're in Charleston, the Carrier Yorktown is there.

Here on the West Coast we've got the USS Hornet in Alameda (Essex Class like the Yorktown), liberty ship Jeremiah O'Brien, USS Pampanito (fleet class sub). There's also the tall ship Balcutha and the schooner Alma which are open to the public (National Park Service). Also the automobile ferryboat Eureka (with old cars too) is open and on display in San Francisco. Support a ship. Visit it.
 
I'm up in Newport, RI right now, and it's really sad to look out on the bay at the base and see the USS Forrestal and USS America sitting tied up and basically abandoned. They've been stripped of the upper works (Radars etc.) and just sit there rusting. They are going to sink America and it appears the Forrestal may become a museum... sigh... Guess I'm gettin old :banghead:
 
I'm glad they are making the Forrestal into a museum. I hate to see old naval vessels scrapped or sunk, theres just so much history there.
 
At least America will go down serving her country. The plan is to use her for a target to see how well the big carriers resist damage. this could save American lives. I'd far rathers see them sunk with some dignity than go to the breakers.

I still regret that the USS Enterprise, CV-6, couldn't be saved. My father served in her in 1942, and was wounded at the Battle of the Santa Cruz Islands, part of the Guadalcanal campaign. Would I have loved to be able to walk her decks! It is like what I expereinced when I got to climb on an SBD Dauntless dive bomber recently. He flew in those as a gunner. Even though he's gone, I felt very close to him.

Then again, maybe Dad had the right idea. Once,I mentioned this to him, but he retorted that it was better that she was scrapped, than to be dishonored by having long-haired, draft-dodging hippies crawl around on her.
 
I'm up in Newport, RI right now, and it's really sad to look out on the bay at the base and see the USS Forrestal and USS America sitting tied up and basically abandoned. They've been stripped of the upper works (Radars etc.) and just sit there rusting. They are going to sink America and it appears the Forrestal may become a museum... sigh... Guess I'm gettin old
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I may be mistaken, but when I was at Newport two summers ago, I could have sworn that the other carrier was Saratoga, not America. According to www.navsource.org, that's the case, and America is currently in PA. Navsource also says that as of April 2004, the Navy made Forrestal available for use as an artificial reef, but Saratoga is on hold for museum donation.
 
By far the ships I have spent the most time on are the guided missile cruiser USS Little Rock (CL-92, later CLG-4), the destroyer USS The Sullivans (DD-537) and the submarine USS Croaker (SS-246, later SSK-246).

These three ships are located at the Buffalo and Erie County Naval & Military Park, in downtown Buffalo, right near where Lake Erie end and the Niagara River begins. (Don't worry, the water is calm. The Falls are a good 25 miles upstream.) This is the largest inland park of it's kind in the US.
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My dad served on the U.S.S Galveston, sister ship to the Little Rock. The Galveston was the first ship with the Talos missle system. My dad came with us on a trip to visit my mother-in-law a few years back and we spent several hours on the Little Rock. He especially liked going through the Talos missle spaces since they were extremely restricted when he was on the Galveston. There were Nuke warheads available for those missles and they WERE carried in the 60's when he was aboard.

I had a private tour of the U.S.S. Missouri conducted by the then head of the (museum ship's) engineering department. It was for an article I hoped to sell. He took us down to spaces that were still closed off to the public like the main Fire Control room and "Broadway" and the "Truman Line" mess and many of the engineering and berthing spaces. Some of those spaces may be open to the public by now, but I'm sure the majority of the ship is still off limits. There's just too much room and not enough money and resources to restore everything.

The big BB's may still technically be Navy property, but they will never be recalled to active service. Without a full-time crew the ships deteroriated rapidly during the relatively short time they were mothballed for the last time. The volunteers for the museum organizations have their hands full just keeping them afloat and safe to tour. The general deterioration and the modifications done for the tours (handicap access and asbestos/hazmat removal, for example) have pretty much eliminated the ability to return the ships to "combat ready" status. The cost would probably be two or even three times what the last restoration to combat ready status cost. Not to mention the fact that one of the reasons they retired the ships for the last time was the difficulty the Navy had in crewing them. Those old ships were very labor intensive and many of the skills were now unique to those ships only. Not much call for Gunner's Mates trained in the 16" guns in the rest of the Navy.
 
I forgot to mention: I grew up a couple hours outside Chicago so I've been on the U-505 more times then I can count. I've also been on the Interpid in NYC and it's companion ships (and sub) and on the other ships in the Naval Park in Buffalo. I still need to get to the U.S.S Silversides sub here in Michigan.

The only active duty ships I've been on were the Kitty Hawk in San Diego a few years back and the U.S.S Constitution two years ago. I got some good pics on the Constitution.

Oh, yeah, I toured the H.M.S. Belfast too. I had no idea it was there and the first time I saw it on the Thames I was like,"Whoah! What's that doing there!"
 
The two things that impressed me the most were: The conditions the old time sub guys were able to put up with(No ice cream machines or plasma TV's!!!!) and how much of the equipment looked the same. I was on the USS Seawolf, and a lot of things just looked the same! Same sound powered phones and jacks, same coffee pots, the TDU(Trash Disposal Unit) looked the same. It was just kind of scary.
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My grandfather served on a light cruiser in the Pacific in WWII. He was still in the Naval reserve when my dad joined the Naval Reserve in the 60's. They'd often drive to drill together.

My dad told me that in a *lot* of ways he served in essentially the same Navy my grandfather had served on in the war. Aside from the nuke powered carriers and subs, much (most?) of the 1960's Navy was made up of WWII ships in various stages of upgrade. The ships were the same, the engineering plants were the same, the majority of the equipment was the same and the procedures were the same. A lot of the senior chiefs and officers my dad served with in the Reserves were WWII vets. These guys were doing the same things on essentially the same ships in the '60s that they'd done in WWII 20 years earlier.

Dad always felt that if they could have taken one of those 1960's era Navy ships back to WWII they wouldn't have had any problem crewing it up with WWII era sailors. (The exception being the Nuke boats). You couldn't do the same thing today.
 
I forgot to mention: I grew up a couple hours outside Chicago so I've been on the U-505 more times then I can count.
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The gentleman who captured the U-505 was Rear Admiral Daniel V. Gallery

Gallery wrote several absolutely hilarious books about the Navy after his retirement. "Cap'n Fatso" and "Stand By To Start Engines" are two of his funniest. He also wrote a serious novel called "The Brink" about a nuclear standoff between a Soviet and American ship. He has written other books, just can't remember them off the top of my head.

The USS "The Gallery's" is named in honor of him and his 2 brothers, both of whom also rose to the rank of Admiral. The fourth "black sheep" brother became a Catholic priest.

Funny reading if you can find copies. It was Admiral Dan and my dad's influence (WWII bubblehead) that prompted me to launch my glorious 23 year naval career! :)
 
The most interesting ship I've ever toured was, without question, the Imperial Russian crusier Aurora, in St. Petersburg. Historical value aside, the ship wasn't too spectacular - it survived the Russo-Japanese war from what seemed more like luck to me than anything else, and it seem notably underarmed - but the manner in which the tour (or lack thereof) was conducted was. I don't really recall any tour guides with our group - we (I was on a 6th Grade field trip) basically were unleashed on the ship and allowed to go anwhere we could reach. Not too many museum ships stateside seem to be like that. I recall HMS Belfast being a bit more lax, but not as much as the Aurora.
 
He especially liked going through the Talos missle spaces since they were extremely restricted when he was on the Galveston. There were Nuke warheads available for those missles and they WERE carried in the 60's when he was aboard.
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That was it, the Talos system. Thanks for that. I was always amazed that those two huge missiles on the fantail of the Little Rock were anti-aircraft missiles. I believe they were actually multi-stage IIRC. As I recall they were intended to take down Soviet Bombers, and yes I do recall learning that they could be equipped with nuke warheads. I also recall learning that every time they fired one (never fired in action, of course), they had to re-paint most of the fantail.

Another funny thing I remember is the first time I toured the Little Rock with my Dad, who was an Electrician's Mate I believe, he was in for about 7 years, from about 1972-1980. Being an enlisted man, he always seemed a little uneasy when we were touring "Officer's Country". Old habits die hard, I guess.
 
Interesting thread, but how come it wasn't locked for not being firearms related? :p
 
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