City - Norfolk State - VIRGINIA Country - United States
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Looking at this vessel bow on is quite interesting and even a bit deceptive. The scale is just incredible. These anchors weigh in at 15 tons each, yet look quite small when viewing the entire ship. What can't be seen are the chains for each of these anchors, approx. 560 feet each, with each link weighing in at 150 pounds. As odd as it may sound, we no longer have the ability to build a ship like this.
Yes, Daniel, we do build even larger warships than this, and aircraft carriers are incredibly complex machines, more so than this 1942 vintage battleship. We can still build carriers, but we can't build a battleship because we no longer have the specific skilled labor, plants that have the industrial processes in place, and the special tooling no longer exists.
Actually George, the USA builds ships even larger that this battleship.....aircraft carriers that are nuclear powered. You show a picture of CVN76 (the Ronald Reagan) a few pictures down from here. The aircraft carrier proved its' worth only months after another great US tragedy, Dec 7,1941. A lasting peace requires eternal vigelance.
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{K:86139} 9/7/2004