http://qvmarine.com/great-loop/charleston-sc-day-2/ a marine adventure Sat, 05 Sep 2015 12:22:27 +0000 hourly 1 https://wordpress.org/?v=3.8.36 http://qvmarine.com/great-loop/charleston-sc-day-2/#comment-28978 Mon, 04 May 2015 06:13:05 +0000 http://qvmarine.com/?p=29203#comment-28978 Also, the destroyer is USS Laffey…she is known as “the ship that would not die”. On april 15, 1945, Laffey was attacked by more than 50 aircraft as she patrolled as radar picket north of Okinawa. Over the course of about 2 hours, Laffey was hit by 4 bombs, 6 kamikaze crashes, and numerous strafing runs, all of which put her in drydock for 4 months to repair the damage….which is a lot considering it only took 5 months to build her in the first place.

]]> http://qvmarine.com/great-loop/charleston-sc-day-2/#comment-28976 Mon, 04 May 2015 06:02:18 +0000 http://qvmarine.com/?p=29203#comment-28976 The USS Yorktown you visited is an Essex class carrier (which replaced the Yorktown class carrier of the same name after it was sunk by a Japanese submarine as it was being towed back to Hawaii after the battle of Midway)…weighing in at 33,000 tons, she’s about 1/3 the weight of a modern nuclear carrier. They could sustain 33 knts, which is why the Iowa class battleships were such a big deal, they were the only battleships that could keep up with the carriers and their cruiser escorts. The USS Alabama you visited could only do 27 knts, and the older BBs built under the London and Washington naval treaties could only make 21-22 knts.

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