Around The World In 80 Waves

 I make some new friends over breakfast and agree to give a bloke a lift over to see Pearl Harbour with me today. An eventful journey inluding another trip on the interstate, but we get there unscathed. This is USS Bowfin. Far too small for me inside. Very claustraphobic 

We go over to the wreck of the Battleship Arizona which was destroyed instanteously in the attacks on pearl harbour when a bomb hit its magazine. The decision was taken to leave the ship resting on the bottom of the harbour with nearly 1000 service men still inside as an eternal memorial to the men lost on that day. You can just see the outline of the ship’s bow under the water the left of the oil slick which is still coming out of the great ship 71 years after she was sunk.

All of this is a very sobering experience and I am swiftly losing my Christmas cheer, but we end the day visiting The ‘Mighty Mo’, the Battleship Missouri on which the Second World war was brought to an end with the signing of Japan’s surrender in 1945. It is the last battleship ever produced and is an awsome vessel which saw action in WWII, Korea, and as recently as the first Gulf War where it started the tommahawk cruise missile campaign.

Mighty Mo’s main battery consisted of nine 16 inch guns, which could fire 2,700 lb armor-piercing shells 20 miles resulting in a crater the size of a tennis court. Awesome firepower!