Quote Originally Posted by Papa View Post
Back in the early 80s I worked in Bremerton, Port Orchard and Poulsbo. Bremerton is located on what's essentially a fjord. And Bremerton is where the USN repaired, scrapped and laid up ships.

The first time I drove SR 16--which comes up from Tacoma, runs east along the fjord and swings around its end to meet SR 3--I saw them.

Across the gray water.

They stood out from the transports and all smaller vessels and submarines. They were at road level, impossibly long, gray, lethal, immensely powerful.

And as I drove north and east on SR 3, they grew more and more impressive, huge, muscular, monstrous.

Iowa class. BB62 and BB63.

Stand on the Missouri's decks, as I often did, and you saw it and felt it.

The America we love and remember best--the America that bared its mighty arm, built and manned these ships and hundreds more, and slew the dragons that tried to consume the world.

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Sic transit gloria mundi.
I was on the USS Wisconsin last year. Its something entirely visceral about these ships. Nothing like them floats today, from how and where they were built to what they did. The steel thickness along the important parts is beyond imagine. Just think about basically taking an arms lenght to describe how thick it was. Its hard to imagine any modern sea skimming anti-ship missile with a horizontal strike doing anything to them.

7M3