We Aren’t Those People Anymore
While we were on vacation we took a quick day trip to Alabama so I could tick that state off my list, and then buzzed over to Florida for my wife who hadn’t been there before. The main point of the trip was to go to Mobile and visit Battleship Memorial Park, a massive complex that has all sorts of military memorabilia but is centered around the decommissioned World War II era battleship, the USS Alabama. Massive picture dump incoming….
It is hard to describe just how enormous those 16 inch gun really are, and I can only imagine how loud those are when they were fired.
The Alabama is an absolute beast, it is impossible to fathom how much steel went into her construction. She is 680 feet long and over 38,000 tons of displacement. Her boilers put out 130,000 shaft horsepower and her war time crew numbered some 2,500 men. Just the logistics of keeping her crew fed and with fresh water, and fuel for the engines is mind boggling.
On the other side is the USS Drum, a World War II era submarine. Where the Alabama is power personified, the Drum is complexity and craftsmanship as befits a vessel that would spend much of her time submerged.
I knew subs were cramped but even for a short guy like me, it was a little claustrophobic in there.
Every compartment is full of gadgets and gizmos to keep the sub underwater and running. It is pretty bewildering but the guys who ran this sub knew what they all did and managed to sink 15 enemy vessels and return home to America in one piece.
What gets me is that the U.S. was able to make vessels from massive battleships and aircraft carriers all the way to stealthy submarines, figure out the mechanics of it all without the aid of computers, and manufacture them with parts that were all made right here in America. Add in tanks and millions of rifles without CNC machines, airplanes that carried enormous payloads and others that could land on the deck of a moving aircraft carrier at sea, and the real miracle of World War II was that it was not won on the battlefields as much as it was won in the factories back home. That in no way diminishes the valor of those fighting men but the bravest soldier is useless without arms, food and other supplies. Not to mention that our factories equipped the Soviets and kept England in the fight long enough for us to get to Europe.
Those people are long gone, the Americans who could build and innovate. All we do anymore is simply tinker around with existing technology before sending the plans to China to mass produce products for consumers. The only exception might be the firearms industry.
For all of our vaunted knowledge and technology, we are a lesser people. We are less tough, less adventurous, less moral, less industrious. If we didn’t have an arsenal of nukes bequeathed to us by better men, we would have been conquered long ago. There are still men of the same caliber as those who built the Alabama and Drum but they are getting fewer by the day and they are being swamped by imbeciles, perverts and cowards.
Visiting these monuments to the nation that is gone is bittersweet, fascinating and horrifying at the same time.