When the Japanese attacked Pearl Harbor, the Battleship NC was in New York. She was launched on June 13, 1940, and commissioned on Apunder the command of Captain Olaf. While she was under construction, World War II commenced. She is built of thousands of tons of steel and displaces over 40,000 tons when loaded. It took hundreds of workmen almost four years to construct her.
It was the first new battleship keel to be laid by the United States Navy in 16 years. The keel of BB55, the USS NORTH CAROLINA, was laid on October 27, 1937. Prior to her construction, the Brooklyn Navy Yard had to be expanded and reinforced.
It took six years from the authorization to build the USS NORTH CAROLINA until she was “Pacific bound.” Authorization to build her, along with her sister ship, the USS WASHINGTON, was contained in an act of Congress passed June 3, 1936. From bow to stern, she is more than 728 feet long or nearly the length of two and one-half city blocks. The war ended on Septemwith Japan’s surrender after the atomic bomb drops on Hiroshima and Nagasaki, and exactly three years eight months, and twenty-two days after Japan bombed Pearl Harbor.įrom her keel (backbone) to the crow’s nest, the USS NORTH CAROLINA is nearly 200 feet high or about the height of a 14-story building. World War II, the most destructive war in history, began on Septemwith the invasion of Poland by Germany. Men died in the jungles of Pacific islands, in the hills of China, in the deserts of Libya, and on the plains of France. Major battles occurred on the soils of Asia, Europe and Africa, as well as on the waters of the Atlantic, Pacific and Mediterranean. The war involved 50 countries, and its effects were felt by all nations. (The United States spent about $250 million per day on the War – ten times the amount it had spent on all its previous wars put together.) Property damage estimates exceeded $239 trillion. Financial costs exceeded one trillion dollars. No one knows exactly how many were killed, wounded or missing between September 1939 and September 1945, but death toll estimates ranged upwardly to 22 million.
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