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2270
Joined
8/31/2010
Location
GB
Edited Date/Time
9/6/2019 3:44pm
Anyone been? I've just finished reading Descent into Darkness, the memoirs of a Navy diver who helped raise a few of the ships like the West Virginia as well as remove the munitions on the Arizona.
Those guys were unreal, the job they did in those conditions. Working inside a sunken blown up battleships, zero visibility due to the fuel oil, running into bodies, the razor sharp mangled metal everywhere, tunneling underneath the sunken ships to check the hulls, the threat of explosions due to gas, with a few of them paying the ultimate price, its just unreal how brave and skilled they were.
So what's the Arizona memorial like? It's somewhere I've always wanted to go and will do in the future.
Those guys were unreal, the job they did in those conditions. Working inside a sunken blown up battleships, zero visibility due to the fuel oil, running into bodies, the razor sharp mangled metal everywhere, tunneling underneath the sunken ships to check the hulls, the threat of explosions due to gas, with a few of them paying the ultimate price, its just unreal how brave and skilled they were.
So what's the Arizona memorial like? It's somewhere I've always wanted to go and will do in the future.
Omaha beach was the best memory of a battlefield I've been to. I was sat on the sand with the sun shining down, concrete bunkers up on the cliff behind, and there was a French family building sand castles and having a picnic. All those boys that came from so far away and died on that very beach are the reason that that family was enjoying a peaceful day on the beach in freedom.
Yeah I've read about the oil, pretty amazing really after all this time. Do you have to book in advance?
It's pretty somber, I think, but it's frustrating how the bulk of the tourists completely ignore the instructions that they give.
The hangars with the bullet holes still in them is pretty awe inspiring.
The USS Missouri was a VERY emotional experience as well. The curators did a great job of representing the combatants on both sides of the war as human beings rather than just the usual treatment of the "enemy" as faceless, nameless, evildoers. Definitely shows that wars are made by old guys far from the action, but they are fought by human beings who are more alike than they realize.
Definitely get the audio tour devices. They definitely help out.
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It's been 20 years since I've been to the Arizona Memorial, but I remember it was really somber. Seeing the names of everyone who died was surreal. I wish I could have seen the USS Missouri Museum, but it wasn't open yet (they had just towed it into place a few weeks before I got there).
I didn't realise that the Missouri was in Pearl Harbour until I made this thread, that's something I'd be interested to checkout. You guys do a good job of keeping your Naval history alive with the only remaining Dreadnought in the world like the Texas, the ww2 submarines and a few other battleships like the North Carolina. We only kept HMS Belfast and scrapped everything else.
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