***USS North Carolina Battleship***

      The USS North Carolina was active in duty from 1941-1947. When she was commissioned she was considered the world's greatest sea weapon and the fastest battle ship in the US army during WWII. This ship was dedicated as the states memorial to its WWII veterans and the 10,000 North Carolinians who died in the war.
     It was totally an amazing experience to get to spend nearly three hours touring this ship. It was absolutely something else... I've never seen anything like it before. It is a monster!! It is 728 Ft long and has 9 stories. Below is some interesting information we read while we were there and I got it off of their website,   www.battleshipnc

     "During World War II, NORTH CAROLINA participated in every major naval offensive in the Pacific area of operations and earned 15 battle stars. In the Battle of the Eastern Solomon’s in August of 1942, the Battleship’s anti-aircraft barrage helped save the carrier ENTERPRISE, thereby establishing the primary role of the fast battleship as protector of aircraft carriers. One of her Kingfisher pilots performed heroically during the strike on Truk when he rescued ten downed Navy aviators on 30 April 1944. In all, NORTH CAROLINA carried out nine shore bombardments, sank an enemy troopship, destroyed at least 24 enemy aircraft, and assisted in shooting down many more. Her anti-aircraft guns helped halt or frustrate scores of attacks on aircraft carriers. She steamed over 300,000 miles. Although Japanese radio announcements claimed six times that NORTH CAROLINA had been sunk, she survived many close calls and near misses with one hit when a Japanese torpedo slammed into the Battleship’s hull on 15 September 1942. A quick response on the part of the crew allowed the mighty ship to keep up with the fleet. By war’s end, the Ship lost only ten men in action and had 67 wounded."