Deep South Tour - Fall 2011 - Day 14

After breakfast we set off again, after a 36+ hour break from driving Julia was back at the wheel. Our first stop was at Sheila’s house to say goodbye.
The SatNav guided us well and while we were there Sheila phoned her friend, Bobby, an Atlanta taxi driver, so that he would be ready to assist us when we finished in Atlanta having returned our rental car. We were so amused to overhear the conversation, when she told him to look after her English relatives. When she told him our hotel in Atlanta, he must have expressed some concern because she replied, “These relatives are white but they’ll be cool with the location.” We were flattered by her description and confidence in us.
We were all hoping that she would find herself able to join us in Atlanta but she had contractors to deal with in New Orleans so, it had to be doubtful, having Bobby’s number was a good back-up.
We got on our way again, knowing we had 310 miles to Montgomery, our Alabama stop, at the Comfort Inn and Suites. On the way we would go through Mobile and take a time-out to visit the USS Alabama, a WW2 battleship.
The battleship resides on a memorial park next to the ocean which also features a variety of aircraft, tanks, military vehicles and two submarines. Although we spent considerable time there we still did not see everything.
The facts I recall, and have researched later, about the USS Alabama are interesting, the major message is that the Alabama was built when clearer sighted naval experts had realised that the battleship as a concept was finished, the queen of the seas was now the aircraft carrier.
The Alabama was built, costing $80 million, in a record time of 30 months using 24 hour shifts to complete her; she was commissioned in 1943 and fought until the end of the war in 1945 a similar length of time as it took to build her. She is the fifth newest battleship ever built, and no more battleships will ever be built. She was mothballed in 1947 and would have been scrapped in 1963 but was saved by public appeal.
She was called the Lucky A because, during World War II, she lost no American lives aboard her due to enemy fire – the crew lost only 5 men in combat situations during that time, none to enemy fire. Average age of the 2,500-man crew was only 21 years old – it was a young man’s war.
The battle ship was basically a platform to deliver massive fire-power against other big ships or coastal targets, with a secondary armament to defend itself from smaller ships and aircraft.
The USS Alabama had nine 16 inch guns housed in three turrets with three guns each, two turrets forward and one aft. Each 16 inch Big Gun could shoot up to 21 miles accurately. Each time the big guns fired, the shell weighed up to 2,700 pounds, the equivalent of shooting a small automobile, and it took 540 pounds of black gunpowder to shoot it, each time, and the big guns could shoot at least once every 30 seconds. So when the big guns were firing, more than 58,000 pounds or 29 TONS left the battleship each minute!
It took 140 men to man each of the big gun turrets, which were 5 levels deep on the ship. The big gun turrets on the battleship could turn up to 270 degrees, but were not attached to the ship in any way, so if the ship turned over, the turrets would fall out.
There was a colour-coded self-guided tour round the battleship which would easily take two hours to complete.
On the site there is a civil war submarine which was closed up but just walking round it you got the message of how vulnerable the men crammed into it would be, its attack plan was to sneak up to surface ships and fix a mine to them before sneaking off again hopefully before the mine, known at this time as a torpedo, exploded.
There is also USS Drum a WW2 submarine, for which there was another self-guided tour but this time no colours were required, the tour goes, climb down the ladder, walk through the boat, bending to get through doors, squeezing through small gaps, climb up the ladder at the other end! I defy anyone to make this tour last over 15 minutes.
While the crew of the battleship was normally 2,500, bigger than most towns in Alabama, the crew of the submarine was only 72, 7 Officers and 65 enlisted. I cannot grasp how 72 men lived and fought under such cramped conditions.
Interestingly Battleship Alabama won 9 Battle Stars, mainly by shooting down enemy aircraft and shelling islands held by the Japanese while Submarine Drum won 12 Battle Stars by sinking enemy shipping, this as much as anything is a pointer to how naval power was to develop. Head to head the Drum would likely sink the Alabama by a stealthy torpedo attack while the battleship would be unaware of its presence until too late, so the civil war submariners were onto something.
We went round the aircraft display and enjoyed the experience, our favourite aircraft were a P-51D Mustang, inside the display, a B-25J Mitchell parked close to the Alabama, and the Douglas Dakota which must have the world record for longevity as a model and for number of miles flown in all areas.
We needed to move on before we could check out the tanks and armored vehicles, we also missed the memorials.
Vietnam veterans designed, financed, and built the Alabama Vietnam Veterans Memorial in the Park. The black granite walls honor the 175 Mobile and Baldwin County deceased, as well as the 1,213 Alabama Vietnam veterans who made the ultimate sacrifice. The new equally impressive Alabama Korean War Veterans Memorial was dedicated on June 25, 2002, and stands next to the Vietnam Memorial, with 752 Alabamians remembered on the gray granite.
We arrived at the Comfort Inn & Suites on the edge of Montgomery to find it filling up rapidly with fans returning from the Auburn University Football match v Ole Miss, a really big game. Overnight the hotel was full and breakfast was the most crowded we encountered anywhere on our tour.
We ventured out to find dinner but our instructions let us down and we ended up close to the hotel, eating at Cracker Barrel – upside very economic and nicely home cooked – downside the staff were far to keen on getting you in and out in the minimum time possible.