Spent the day on the USS Iowa. Biggest, longest guns I've ever seen !!!
http://i1190.photobucket.com/albums/...0/IMG_2356.jpg
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Spent the day on the USS Iowa. Biggest, longest guns I've ever seen !!!
http://i1190.photobucket.com/albums/...0/IMG_2356.jpg
Yup, pretty impressive.
I climbed around on the battleship Alabama a few decades ago, got up inside one of the turrets, and looked through the optical sights for one of the big 16-inch guns. One of the few times I was nearly overwhelmed by a sense of living history from an inanimate object.
They brought one to Norfolk and moored it next to an aircraft carrier and it made the battleship look tiny until you noticed the gun turrets and its awesome firepower.....
If I remember the text from the deck display on the Alabama correctly, it made a reference to shooting a projectile that weighed about the same as an old VW Beetle. It could be launched more than 20 miles. :smt107
And put a dang big hole in darn near anything, when it arrived...
...and that was BEFORE it exploded!