Her wartime complement consisted of 144 commissioned officers and 2,195 enlisted men, including about 100 Marines.ĭuring World War II, NORTH CAROLINA participated in every major naval offensive in the Pacific area of operations and earned 15 battle stars. Armed with nine 16-inch/45 caliber guns in three turrets and twenty 5-inch/38 caliber guns in ten twin mounts, NORTH CAROLINA proved a formidable weapons platform. Following them were the SOUTH DAKOTA Class – SOUTH DAKOTA (BB 57), INDIANA (BB 58), MASSACHUSETTS (BB 59), and ALABAMA (BB 60) – and the IOWA Class - IOWA (BB 61), NEW JERSEY (BB 62), MISSOURI (BB 63), and WISCONSIN (BB 64).Īt the time of her commissioning on 9 April 1941, she was considered the world’s greatest sea weapon. NORTH CAROLINA (BB 55) and her sister ship, WASHINGTON (BB 56), comprised the NORTH CAROLINA Class. She became the first of ten fast battleships to join the fleet in World War II.
When the keel of BB 55, NORTH CAROLINA, was laid in October of 1937, she was the first battleship to be constructed in sixteen years. She was sold for scrap in 1923 along with her five sister ships and WASHINGTON. The keel for NORTH CAROLINA had been laid in Norfolk in 1919, but the signed treaty spelled her doom. In fact, there was a ten-year "holiday" declared on building battleships. The signing nations agreed to reduce the size of their navy and to cease building warships beyond an allotted number. The group convened in Washington in November 1919 and the meeting became known as the famous Washington Conference producing the Five Power Treaty (included all attendees except China).
Harding invited Great Britain, France, Italy, Japan and China to attend an international conference on the limitation of naval armaments. While the construction of new ships was exciting, most people did not want a repeat of the arms race that contributed to the tensions leading to World War I. They would have been the most heavily armed capital ship in the world at that time. She and her five sister ships, IOWA, INDIANA, SOUTH DAKOTA, MASSACHUSETTS, and MONTANA were monster ships. Battleship number 52 was to be called NORTH CAROLINA, but she was never completed.īetween 19, the United States Congress approved the construction of six battleships, one of which would be christened NORTH CAROLINA.
0 kommentar(er)
