Originally posted by BB61Vet
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This was also instructed for all Civil Defense personnel (Air Raid Wardens, etc.) with brocures showing how to smother a Thermite bomb on a roof top. So all flat-roofed buildings in America had buckets of Sand and several shovels stowed in special weather-proof storage shacks built on top of the building.
To load inert 16-inch shells while she is still in Benicia would require bringing out barges full of them (as I witnessed and inspected during a load-out on New Jersey in Seal Beach NWS). Also, correct me if I'm wrong, we would have to activate at least two shell hoists in the forward turrets to run them up into their stowage racks.
We do plan to do that, but preferably from pierside which would be a good show for visitors also.
CALLING ALL GUNNERS MATES. We will need your experience in loading Battleship ammo in at least directing the younger and healthier volunteers and/or workers to do it the right way and the SAFE way.
So far, the simplest way I can think of at the moment is to bring a water barge out with FRESH water and pump it into the forward ballast tanks.
By the way, another VIP I have on my list is Corporal Frank Grubb USMC. He was serving on the Iowa while she was in Tokyo Harbor along with the Missouri, New Jersey and North Carolina for the Japanese surrender.
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