Battleship USS North Carolina

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Sealable door in one of the many corridors

Inside the triple 16" gun turret

The artillery elevator room

A few weekends ago I visited the Battleship USS North Carolina in Wilmington, NC with my son, for the first time since I was a young boy. It's pretty amazing to think that over two thousand sailors were on this boat in the Pacific in full battle bombarding the shoreline, sinking ships  and shooting down Japanese planes. The ship was active during World War II and survived a major torpedo blow only to be repaired and reactivated. The amount of engineering that went into a ship like this was astounding. There was not much space left over for people, but they did fit, and slept in small bunks stacked five high.Below deck is a maze of rooms and services and you could have spent hours studying the displays and understanding how the ship worked. The battleship was decommissioned in 1947 and moved to Wilmington, NC as a National Memorial in 1961. The tours are self-guided. A worthy tour spot on the NC coast.