When I first visited Alabama 9 years ago, I was a neophyte as a battleship professional. I had officially started as a tour guide on Iowa a couple of weeks earlier, and still thought it would be a short-term thing till I saw the engines and fire-control system. I came away distinctly unimpressed, on two grounds. First, there was nobody to talk to, and second, I didn't think that much of the museum aspects. This time around, I solved the first problem by dragging the Fatherly One and some other friends to the ship for the visit,1 and they seem to have worked quite a bit on the second side themselves. Either that, or my taste has improved, which might be some of it, but there was a lot of stuff I think I would have remembered had it been there last time.
A battleship in fog2
Since my last visit predates this blog by a couple of years3 I am going to do this pretty much de novo. On the whole, I had a great time, and owe Alabama an apology. I don't think she's quite as good as Massachusetts, but she's very close, and the decision of which one to go to should be made based mostly on logistics. Both ships are set up with a couple of tour routes, one through the upper decks and superstructure and a couple down below, and I think Alabama's layout was better, as I never really got turned around. Signage throughout was very competent, and Alabama is the most accessible battleship I've been to. All three turrets were open, and although Turret 3 was still pretty dim, Turret 1 was well-lit, and you could go up to the 08 level, versus 05 on Iowa and 04 on Massachusetts. They had also cut into the 2nd barbette, although unlike on her sister, you can't go into the powder flat. I think they did a better job of doing the "city at sea" aspect than Massachusetts did, at least in part because they'd cleared out less space for various onboard museums although most of it was just how well they'd dressed a lot of the spaces.
ISN'T IT PRETTY?
Oh, right. They'd also pulled the access plates off one of their rangekeepers and one of the stable verticals in the plotting room. I was almost delirious with joy when I saw it, and may have given a short version of the fire-control spiel to random passers-by. Seriously, well done. The only thing that would make it better is pulling one out, taking off the panels and putting it somewhere you can walk around it.
I have a slightly difficult time figuring out how to evaluate Drum. By the standards of the other fleet boats I've seen since my last visit, she was competent but nothing particularly special, with minimal signage and spaces that are still mostly original. But most of those other fleet boats were independent attractions, and what is kind of annoying for a visit where you've paid $25 just for the sub4 is a lovely side dish to the battleship.5
Except that there is one way Drum is not like any of the other fleet boats. You have full access to the conning tower, including the periscope (pointed at Alabama) and an operational torpedo data computer, a quest that I have failed to complete on all of the other subs I've visited. I will say that the conning tower is quite cramped and anyone who is claustrophobic should probably give it a miss (to say nothing of the rather challenging ladder, which I can only assume means that lawsuits don't really exist in Alabama), but it was definitely a highlight of the trip.
I would evaluate the rest of the park in much the same way as Drum. There's nothing particularly special (except maybe the YF-17 prototype and an A-12 Blackbird), but it's competently done, with everything from some tanks and artillery pieces to a bunch of Coast Guard aircraft and a few boats, and a B-52D. By itself, it would be a mid-range museum, but as a way to spend a few minutes walking on grass instead of steel, it was very nice indeed. I should also mention the on-site restaurant. It was pretty busy when we got there, and service was rather slow, but the food was worth the prices in a way not typical of museum ship fare.
The noise doesn't really translate to pictures
I really have only one major complaint: the engine room on Alabama. Signage was pretty lacking, and for some reason, they had decided to play background sounds quite loudly. I didn't quite find it physically painful, but I had to shout to be heard over the noise, and I didn't like having to compete with random mechanical noises when trying to give my second-favorite spiel. I would not be surprised if OSHA had words about the volume in the space. Turn that down quite a bit, or at the very least only put it on for maybe 30 seconds every couple minutes so people trying to talk can do so, instead of having to run away before they'd finished explaining how a boiler works.6 That said, the engine room was pretty much entirely open, and you could get up close and personal with the boiler faces in a way you couldn't on Massachusetts. Seriously, fix that, and I might move Alabama into the lead of the SoDak stakes.
The view from the 08 level is pretty cool, too
So with that one rather large niggle, consider this post an apology to Alabama. Whatever she may have deserved in late 2015, these days, she's an excellent place to visit. She's also extremely convenient to I-10, and the only real reason not to drop by if you happen to be passing through is if the rest of your party has unreasonable expectations about the appropriate amount of time to spend at military museums and is forcing you to choose between this and Pensacola.
1 I probably still wouldn't have had as great a time if I'd been by myself, as the issue of everyone there being there just to make money was pretty much still the case, although I did briefly get to talk to a crewmember this time. But I've gotten good enough at summoning audiences that it's been 6 years since I did a ship solo, so this version is more fair to Alabama than the last one. ⇑
2 Thanks to Sean and The Fatherly One for the photos. ⇑
3 I had some internet comments on the experience at the time which served as the basis for the review. ⇑
5 The Fatherly One says that he thought Cod was better, largely due to the use of whole-room audio, (which I do think is vastly underused) but harder to get in and out of. ⇑
6 Actually, what I would really recommend is to put it on a button so visitors can hear it for maybe 20-30 seconds when they want to. But please put a cooldown on it so nobody can jam the room by hitting the button repeatedly. If they had guides taking groups down to the engine room (they apparently don't) this would definitely get fixed. ⇑
Comments
Funny, the Skyraider shown in the photo is on loan from the National Naval Aviation Museum!
There's an excellent chance that any given postwar naval aircraft on display in the US is on loan from Pensacola. That's just how it works. Likewise, most USAF birds are on loan from Dayton. As far as I know, the loans stay out unless something goes very wrong.
This has me wondering: how noisy was life on a warship in cruise (i.e. not shooting or similar, just going from A to B)?
Constant annoyance, and new recruits are sleep-deprived until they get used to it? Or not noticeable unless you're either actually in the engine room, or trying to do something noise-sensitive like listening for submarines?
This training video suggests 'not noticeable', but it's also possible that the interior scenes were filmed in port. You've previously mentioned annoying and sometimes actually problematic levels of vibration.
AIUI, if you're not on a sub, it's reasonably noisy, probably enough to interfere somewhat with sleep. Definitely so if you're on a carrier and in the part of officer's country right underneath the flight deck.
There is definitely a high-level of ambient noise (from ventilation, various electrical machinery, other random systems) you get used to very quickly in daily life when you're underway, to the point you don't even notice it until you pull in to port and turn it off and it's unnaturally quiet. There are also various intermittent noises apart from major evolution that fade into the background, but aren't constant (there's one frequency-I think was the motor for the RAST that would kick on whenever they were doing things with the aircraft-that is burned into my brain). Sonar when active is a weird chirping. And of course big events that make lots of noise also happen, but since they are big events, it's already bothering you. Everyone on a ship is sleep deprived anyway; I can't imagine being so bad at sleeping that the ambient noise would bother you; someone who couldn't handle that wouldn't last long in the Navy, I suspect.
Hearing conservation is one of the major safety programs onboard (boy is it-source: former Assistant Safety Officer) and various rooms in the ship have to be labeled requiring you to wear either single-level (plugs or muffs) or double-level (plugs and muffs, usually only for specific events), and people are supposed to be wearing them. The engine rooms are all single-level all the time.
As an aside, I'm pretty sure I've posted this video before but knowing how loud a 5" is, to listen to it and hear the noise be completely overwhelmed by the 16"ers is impressive and mildly horrifying.