Ancestors

Toot

Written by Richard Welty on 2024-12-28 at 12:10

taking advantage of our extended trip to Durham NC for the holidays; today i'm making the run to the coast to visit the Battleship North Carolina. will post a few pics later today. 1/

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Descendants

Written by Richard Welty on 2024-12-28 at 12:12

2/ North Carolina was the first Treaty Battleship built by the US. the Washington Naval Treaties had imposed limits on naval units built by the signatories (the major naval powers) including a battleship "holiday". the holiday ended in the mid 1930s at which point new BBs were constructed. these BBs, though, were constrained by the treaties (the Washington Treaty and the subsequent London Treaties) in both displacement and size of the main battery.

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Written by Richard Welty on 2024-12-28 at 12:15

3/ thus, the design of the North Carolina class was limited to 35,000 tons and 14" guns. however, actions by various treaty signatories triggered a clause that permitted the North Carolinas to be built with 16" guns, leading to an "imbalanced" design; this is to day that the North Carolinas were not armored against guns of the size they carried. two North Carolinas were built (the other being Washington) and they served well through out the war.

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Written by Richard Welty on 2024-12-28 at 12:28

4/ Washington, in particular, was noted for the accuracy of her gunnery (Admiral Lee, who used Washington as his flagship, was a noted marksman and wouldn't have it any other way.) the story of Washington (and Lee's) encounter with Krishima at Guadalcanal is told here: https://www.usni.org/magazines/naval-history-magazine/2011/january/washington-wins-draw

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Written by Richard Welty on 2024-12-28 at 12:29

5/ the North Carolinas were immediately followed by the 4 BBs of the South Dakota class. they reduced the length of the ship to afford a more compact armored citadel, thus balancing the design.

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Written by Richard Welty on 2024-12-28 at 12:33

6/ Battleship gunfire actions were rare in the Pacific. US battleships only participated in two. BBs were being eclipsed by carriers, and mostly served as floating AA batteries (you can fit a lot of AA guns on a battleship) and for shore bombardment. US naval officers quickly became obsessed with AA and spent the entire war figuring out how to cram more and more on everything that floated.

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Written by Richard Welty on 2024-12-28 at 12:34

7/7 of these battleships North Carolina was preserved, in Wilmington. Two of the South Dakotas were preserved, Massachusetts (Fall River MA) and Alabama (Mobile AL). The following class of battleships, the Iowas, were a different story.

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Written by SK53 on 2024-12-28 at 15:33

@nfgusedautoparts Will have to see if I can find mine from 1973! Regret not going to Battleship Cove 25 years ago.

The new NAM Rodger book "The Price of Victory" is very good on the Naval Treaties.

OTOH they left us with a splendid collection of might-have beens : 7-stack Lexingtons, the first South Dakotas, and sundry British designs (G3, etc.)

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Written by SK53 on 2024-12-28 at 21:06

@nfgusedautoparts Here we go, plus one of me leaning on the hire car we used from Ithaca to State College (June 25, '73 : John Dean III started his Watergate testimony that day).

[#]USSNorthCarolina #Wilmington

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Written by Richard Welty on 2024-12-28 at 21:58

@SK53 will look this book up. I know a little about the period but not nearly enough.

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Written by Richard Welty on 2024-12-28 at 22:08

I see this will also cover HMS Dreadnought and Jackie Fischer too, so bonus!

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Written by SK53 on 2024-12-28 at 23:08

@nfgusedautoparts Lots of interesting re-evaluations, often high-level, but clearly based on deep research (it's been 25 years since the previous volume, he had a serious illness). Still working my way through the references to see what I ought to read.

Robert Massie's two books are an entertaining popular history of the Dreadnought period.

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Written by Richard Welty on 2024-12-29 at 00:51

@SK53 currently working my way through The Rules of the Game which has been very instructive about Jutland.

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Written by SK53 on 2024-12-29 at 02:23

@nfgusedautoparts absolutely fantastic book, completely restarted my interest. Must have bought it 25 years ago : from was a specialist remaindered bookshop in the local town.

Has everything from deep-seated organisational issues through to a detailed account of the action. There's a bit about ships chronometer not being synchronised which I used to include if talking about #OpenHistoricalMap

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Written by Richard Welty on 2024-12-29 at 02:29

@SK53 i'm enjoying Gibson's research, precision and care. it's a very nice work. have not gotten to the stuff on chronometers yet, but i've seen at least one discussion of the first night of the Naval Battle of Guadalcanal that dives into chronometer synchronization issues.

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