Moored near the Arizona Memorial at Pearl Harbour is the largest and last battleship, the USS Missouri. She was commissioned in 1944 and fought at the battles of Iwo Jima and Okinawa during WW2. She also fought in the Korean War (1950-53) and Desert Storm in 1991. She was decommissioned in 1992 and donated as a museum ship at Pearl in 1998. When you visit Pearl you can climb over most of the ship. Actually, when we were there it was so very hot that Mum only saw the stuff on the main deck and rooms off it before finding shade to wait in. Dad set off to see as much of the upper decks as he could, but only managed to get to the open bridge area about half-way up the superstructure. It is a massive vessel and you need hours to see it all. The most impressive things are the nine 16" (41 cm) main guns. These can send a shell the weight of a VW Beetle 32km and are accurate enough to "park the Beetle" in a spot the size of a single-car garage. Very impressive. There are lots of smaller guns, twenty 5" in twin turrets, and lots of smaller machine guns. She also has anti-aircraft and anti-ship missile systems. Naturally, all of these weapons were deactivated when she became a museum, but they are still impressive to see. The most historic part of the ship is the deck where the Japanese Instrument of Surrender was signed in September 1945. Why is there a screen around the gadget at the bow? It is a radar antenna that is supposedly secret, but is visible through the screen and is present on the latest models of the ship. Speaking of models, I have to hassle Dad about building one.
Labels: boats, climbing, Hawaii
# posted by Bart Bear @ 11:11 am
