First Impressions: Love at First Sight

"I fell in love with her when I saw her. I am talking about the ship, not my wife. I don’t know. There was just something about it to see that huge thing sitting in the Navy Yard. It was love at first sight, really."

- Jackson Belford

"When we arrived at the Navy Yard, we were marched down to the ship, what a sight to see for the first time. It looked so big and so formidable as we went up the after gangway for the first time."

- William R. Taylor

"In March, 1941, I walked through the Flushing Avenue gate of the Brooklyn Navy Yard to report for duty. It is a pretty rugged part of town; and I looked down the street there as I walked through the gate, and there I saw the first hundred feet of the bow of the NORTH CAROLINA, which was sort of peering out from behind some buildings that obscured the rest of the ship. The bow was red-lighted; the ship was sitting in dry dock and was about a month from being commissioned. I walked on down the street, and there I found the ship in dry dock. It was covered in red lead, scaffolding all over, but so help me, God, she was the biggest damn thing I’d ever seen. We had a crew of about sixteen hundred men, about ninety-five officers." (later the number would increase to 2,339)

- Rear Admiral Julian T. Burke, Jr., USN (Ret)