Sometimes, you just have to take your roadschooling “on the road.” And yesterday, Brian and I did just that.
East of Mobile, AL, in Mobile Bay, is Battleship Memorial Park, home of the USS Alabama, BB60, a WW2 Sub, and a host of warbirds of all ages.
Below is the text of the report Brian wrote the day before:
The USS Alabama was first launched in 1942, and after her shakedown cruise in Chesapeake Bay, headed to Casco Bay, Maine to conduct operational training. After returning to Chesapeake Bay to finish training, she went back to Casco Bay to join Task Group 22.2 for tactical maneuvers in February 1943. The Alabama and the South Dakota were then sent to join the Home Fleet of Britain to aid in covering the northern convoy routes after Britain sent a large number of ships to Sicily to prepare for an attack there. The Alabama and her sister ship changed Task Forces and locations for a little while, eventually ending up covering the reinforcement for the garrison on the island of Spitzbergen. The ship then went to southern Norway to create a diversion for the primary Allied force’s attack to take Sicily.
After returning to America for repairs, it was sent to the Japanese controlled Gilbert Islands, and saw combat as a defensive unit for the other ships, taking down aircraft to stop counterattacks. The Alabama continued to fight in World War II. After its time in World War II, the people of Alabama raised the funds for the preservation of the ship. The ship was awarded to them, and is now in Battleship Memorial Park, Mobile, Alabama as a memorial to those who served in World War II.
The Alabama has also appeared in several movies, including most of the battleship scenes in the 1992 movie Under Siege, as a stand in for the USS Iowa in the ABC miniseries War and Remembrance, and the opening scene in the movie Rapid Fire.
As a Navy veteran, and someone who spent a lot of time reading WW2 novels as a kid, I had a gas wandering around that old girl. They had maybe 50% of the space wide open, we could wander around at will. The entire site was pretty cool. They had various warbirds scattered about the grounds, everything from a Sea Sprite rescue helicopter to a B52. Then there was a huge building where they kept the “good stuff” including a modern FA/18, and a Lockheed A-12, the predecessor of the SR-71 Blackbird. There was also a WW2 submarine, we didn’t go in as the day was getting late.
Here is the report Brian wrote about our visit:
I had a ton of fun when we visited the Alabama. I learned a lot about how the ship worked, how it did the things it needed to do to provide the services it needed to provide for 2,200 enlisted and 140 officers to survive. Everything from boilers heating ocean water into steam to power the engines to a chef, a doctor, a barber, a dentist, and several stores were on the ship. It was essentially a floating city for the people onboard. We saw the whole ship, everything from the outside to the inner mechanisms of the giant guns. To say it was cool is an understatement. The giant guns came up from all the way down in the bottom floor of the ship, with a huge loading mechanism, they wrapped chairs and a curving table around the center of it to give people a place to eat. The ammunition would be pulled up right past where everyone was eating into the rest of the loading mechanism. Steam boilers would intake salt water, boil it into steam, and then output fresh water when it condensed. The fresh water would then be used either to power the turbines or as drinking water. They had a fully stocked kitchen, shops, doctor’s office, dentist’s office, and tons of other services for everyone there.
As we were leaving, we stopped at the Alabama Vietnam Memorial, a moving experience for someone who served during that time. I totally enjoyed taking my son to this place, and he get’s an “A”!
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