Topic: USS Alabama WIP

[Captain Pierce]

Um...  not to nitpick here or anything, but is it just me, or do the aft pair of phaser banks on the primary seem like they have no clear firing arc?  The dorsal ones would take out the pylons holding the torpedo deck, and the ventral ones would get the neck... 

[J. Carney]

I notice in that pic that the ship has a Radar Dish.  I don't know much about the history of the Alabama, but when was it decommisioned?  Looks like it was in service for quite some time if it has advanced radar.

According to this website, http://www.ussalabama.com/html/history/index.php it was decomissioned in 1965.

Alabama was DECOMISSIONED in 1965, but she was pretty much out of hte game right after the war. I think it was about 47-48 that she was put into mothballs with about 80% of our other WWII vets. She had the most advanced search radar that the US Navy fielded at the time.

1965 was when she was finally taken off the regestry and sold to 'the People of the State of Alabama' for a couple of million dollars... minus the boilers and the Westinghouse reduction gears.

USELESS FACT OF THE DAY: The US Navy didn't actually own the reduction gears in those old ships. They were LEASED from Westinghouse, and were repossessed after the ship's final decomissioning. (according to my Grandfather, a Fireman 2/c on the U.S.S. Toledo CA-133)

[J. Carney]

Oh...

I know her well enough to be a tour guide.

[Magnum357]

Repossessed... that just pathetic.     Why did they take out the boilers for her?  Ya, I know she's just a museum, but wouldn't it be a wise idea to give her propulsion incase a hurricane or something directly hit her location?

[J. Carney]

Repossessed... that just pathetic.     Why did they take out the boilers for her?  Ya, I know she's just a museum, but wouldn't it be a wise idea to give her propulsion incase a hurricane or something directly hit her location?

I think that they intended to re-use the boilers...

Or, of course, I guess they might have been afraid that George Wallace might get REALLY pissed off, seceed again, and use her to bombard D.C.

Besides, you couldn't get the old girl out away form her moorings with anything short of Divine Intervention these days. The silt has filled in the channel they dredged to bring her in by (it's been almost 50 years) and she's practically sitting on the ground now. Her screws would be so mired that you'd never even get them to turn.

Add to that the fact that she's been practically beached for the last 25 years, and you' wind up with some nasty hull & screw damage... Alabama hasn't been seaworthy enough for even a trip to Pensacola in my lifetime! That's the biggest part of what's wrong with her now... so many hull seems popped when Katrina hit her that she suffered pretty bad flooding and loss of hull integrity. They have been thinking about draging her the 5 miles to the shipyards and patching her hull for a decade or more... perhaps now they'll do it for real- either that or build a cofferdam, drain the water from around her, pour concrete around her hull, and seal things off so the decay will stop.

The latter idea is probably the wisest and cheapest.