Battleship North Carolina Curators Keep History Alive-- Part 2

Items in this storage area are divided into 2-D and 3-D classifications.  The 2-D collection has more than 4,000 photos and 25,000 blueprints of the ship.  Many of these were still on the ship when it arrived at Wilmington.

Since then, diaries have been donated (even though the crew was not supposed to keep them.  On April 6, 1945, a sailor described a "friendly fire" incident that killed three crew members.  He said how he was eating breakfast with one of the three that very morning and the man had joked that he didn't want insurance because the minute you get it, something bad happens to you.

There is a pilot's leather jacket among other items in the 3-D collection.  Others of this group were found on the ship like boxes of empty liquor bottles smuggled on board and hidden inside the bulkheads.  They have lots of dress uniforms and blue wool uniforms, but only two chambray shirts-- the blue work shirts enlisted sailors wore most of the time.

Worth Checking Out.  --GreGen