“Why does Nevada talk about clearing the channel in her profile? I mean why isthis an accomplishment??”
(I’m gonna start tagging with the historical inspirations and stuff later since this one gets into actual history)
I work with primary sources frequently and that’s the details you get sometimes. The Nevada happens to be fully loaded for exercises that was scheduled to begin tomorrow. It’s a literal powder keg with the extra ammo lying around. The officer that I read from they had to remove the 14” shells by hand, round by round, bit by bit, to make sure she doesn’t explode and block the channel for good since she was in shallow waters.
Add the fact that she was sank at the portion that is fairly narrow, and that the main munitions depot was very close by…
Think about it. Each 14” shell needs two bags of powder. There were 16” shells too. This isn’t accounting for the smokeless powders and all that other stuff. Nevada herself have hundreds shells on board and at least 1400 shells reserved for her at the depot. If they did things badly and she blew up, it’d “blow the windows out of every house in Kansas” (his words, not mine)
Of course, it got done in record time and obviously no accidents occurred. So I think it’s definitely an accomplishment.