| The 16 inch guns comprise NORTH CAROLINA's "Main Battery," her most destructive weapon. These big guns provided impressive fire power. They could accurately fire at a target 21-23 miles away, depending on the type of projectile used. |
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The 16-inch guns fulfilled two important purposes:
A turret is a massive circular structure that is supported and rotated on a ring of heavy rollers. Each rotating turret consists of three 16 inch guns and all the equipment required to aim, load, and fire the three guns. On a 16 inch turret each gun barrel may be elevated independently of the other two barrells. On the five inch guns both barrels must be raised and lowered together. The turret has six levels. The top one can be seen from the Main Deck while the remaining five levels extend down through the Ship. The lowest level is located just above the Ship's bottom. During World War II, approximately three officers and 177 enlisted men worked in each turret and could fire one round from each gun every 30 seconds. "Following on schedule at 2:00PM, General Quarters was sounded, this time it was for a purpose, the bombardment of Ponape (1 May 1944). But before this took place, we had to launch our planes. Then at 3:00PM we commenced firing upon the island, this went on for about two hours and all was successful. During our time of bombardment of the island, we had a submarine contact and our destroyers started to drop depth charges, but weren’t very successful, and this contact soon faded out of the picture. At about 4:45PM we secured from firing on the island for there wasn’t much left to waste any more ammunition on. This bombing was to destroy anything the enemy had that was worthwhile in the line of fuel, stores, and supply buildings, as well as ammunition dumps. This all went well, and about 30 minutes later, we recovered our planes safely, and no resistance what so ever. By the way, the following ships were engaged in this bombardment were INDIANA, ALABAMA, IOWA, NEW JERSEY, and also the NORTH CAROLINA, as you should know, these are all battleships. (The Ship’s Log also lists the battleships MASSACHUSETTS and SOUTH DAKOTA.) Now that every thing is quiet, this night was a surprise; we had movies aboard ship. During this time we were only about 25 miles off the coast of the island of Ponape." - Louis M. "Frenchie" Favereaux "Our battleship and some destroyers were sent in late in the afternoon to start bombardment about dark. The planes had been bombarding for two days. We were sent in to bombard all night, to hold the Japanese down and to keep them from getting any sleep or rest or putting up any fortification. The troops were going to land the next morning, after we put an all-night bombardment on the islands (Roi and Namur, Kwajalein Atoll, 29-30 January 1944). We fired at different intervals every ten or fifteen minutes so that the Japanese would not know when the next salvo (round of fire) was coming." - Henry C. Greenway |
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