Photo: US Naval Air Station NYC
#11306-6-46
The
North Carolina, first of the new generation of monster battleships.
Built at Brooklyn Navy Yard between October 1937 and June 1940. At 729 feet
in length, it was about 300 feet longer than any ship previously built at
BNY. To accommodate it, one of the Yard's Shipways — No.2 — had
to be enlarged: a $2,000,000-dollar job. The PWA paid half, and the WPA
paid the other half and supplied the labor: 14 months' work for 1000 men[
12]. Then, just two weeks after the
North Carolina was launched, the keel of the
Iowa (an even
bigger battleship) was laid in the same shipways.
Links
- Boro
Yard Set to Lay Super-Battleship Keel,
Brooklyn Daily Eagle, 25 May 1940, p.3. The PWA-WPA project to lengthen
BNY's Shipways No.2 for the construction of the battleships
North Carolina and Iowa.
- USS
North Carolina (BB-55), Wikipedia: history of the ship, including
service in WWII.
- Battleship Photo
Archive: BB-55 USS North Carolina, www.navsource.org, accessed
12 Jun 2018.
- Battleship North Carolina,
the website the USS North Carolina Battleship Memorial, where the ship
itself is docked at Eagle Island on the Cape Fear River, Wilmingon, NC,
and has been open to visitors since 1961.