USS Alabama

Parker has been wanting to see the USS Alabama since the day we moved here, and Saturday was finally the day. Our friends, the Haby's, wanted to tour it as well, so off the four of us went to tour the USS Alabama! I am not the biggest museum/history person, but I love seeing Parker happy, so I had a good time. I do not have a four hour attention span, so I got a little crabby when we were going through slowly and reading everything, but Parker said overall I did a good job (fist pump!).

 The day consisted of three parts: touring the battleship, touring the aviation hangar, and touring the submarine. We all toured the battleship together, and it was really eye-opening to see how these people lived and functioned aboard the USS Alabama. The aviation hangar was neat and probably my favorite part since Parker is in flight school. Parker knew a lot about most of the planes and really just wanted to touch them all (I bet he made a precious five year old). He was more interested in where each specific plane had been and not the background on the type of plane since he can read that on Wikipedia, so we finished up a little before the Haby's and went on to the submarine while they continued in the hangar. We had fun on the submarine and enjoyed those in front of us who were having small breakdowns because of how tight the space was. I will let the pictures tell the rest, but here are a few notes that Parker wanted to make sure were included in the recap:

The nine 16'' turrets constitute the main battery of the ship. The turrets can hurl 24,300 lbs of steel at the enemy every 30 seconds to a range of 21 miles.

When a sailor got into trouble and needed to be punished, he went to what was called the Brig. It was more or less a prison cell on board the ship, and the sign read "This is the bin for bad apples." (Made us laugh!)

Notable airplanes on display included the A-12 and YF-17. Fun fact: the A-12 travels at 3800 ft/sec. The M-1 rifle bullet only travels at 2800 ft/sec. If the bullet could travel across the United States at a fixed rate of 2800 ft/sec, the A-12 could beat it by 7 minutes.

This was displayed in the battleship...I thought it was neat :)

Parker with one of the tanks outside near the battleship

Okay I am pretty ignorant on all things ships, but this is pretty cool right?!

Parker steering the ship

I couldn't get over the engineering and construction behind this monstrosity of a ship

Any day with you is a day well spent!

We had a great day, and I am glad we could check one more thing off our Pensacola bucket list! I am also glad we got to experience this with the Haby's! It was a productive Saturday well spent :)