USS North Carolina (BB-55)

Type

Battleship

Period

20th Century

Nation

United States

Overview: USS North Carolina (BB-55) is the lead ship of the North Carolina-class fast battleships and was the first new American battleship completed in nearly two decades. She is nicknamed "Showboat" and is famous among modelers as one of the best-preserved WWII-era US battleships still afloat. Specifications: Standard displacement was 35,000 long tons with a full-load displacement around 44,800 long tons; length 728 ft 9 in and beam 108 ft 4 in. Her main battery originally planned as twelve 14-inch guns was changed to nine 16-inch/45 caliber guns in triple turrets, supplemented by twenty 5-inch/38 caliber dual-purpose guns and numerous light AA guns, with armor up to 16 inches on turret faces. She carried three Vought OS2U Kingfisher floatplanes launched from two fantail catapults, a detail worth including on a waterline or full-hull model. Service History: Commissioned in April 1941, North Carolina spent over a year on Atlantic shakedown before moving to the Pacific in mid-1942, where she supported the Guadalcanal campaign and fought in the Battle of the Eastern Solomons. She was torpedoed by a Japanese submarine in September 1942 in the same attack that sank USS Wasp, but was repaired and returned to action, later screening carrier task forces and supporting the invasions of Iwo Jima and Okinawa in 1945. After the war she helped repatriate servicemen during Operation Magic Carpet before being decommissioned in 1947. Notable Facts: The ship earned fifteen battle stars for her WWII service, becoming one of the most highly decorated US battleships of the war. Stricken from the Naval Vessel Register in 1960, she was saved from scrapping by a public fundraising campaign in North Carolina, including donations from schoolchildren, and opened as a museum ship in Wilmington, North Carolina, on 29 April 1962, where she remains on public display today.