Mary and Elliot: No surpise: My favorite part of the USS Alabama trip was the guns.

Confession time. I like guns, always have. Controlling explosions to run complicated machinery and physically affect something very far away has always been something that seems really interesting to me. Now, please don't misunderstand, I abhor violence and I believe it is always deplorable, even when necessary. I truly wish there was never a need for violence. But even though these beliefs are at the core of who I am, I have also always thought guns were neat. It's messed up, but nobody's perfect. It should come as no surprise then, that the main reason why the USS Alabama is so cool to me is all the guns. When I first got to the ship I found out that the USS Alabama has three gigantic turrets that have three 16 inch (bore diameter) 60 foot long cannons on them. They look like this:

They shoot bullets that weight as much as an old Volkswagon Beetle for about 22 miles or something like that. The bullets look like this:

Can you imagine all the technology that went into that? Pretty amazing. Later, as I was walking around, I spotted this:

There appear to be lenses inside that box attached to the side of the turret. This made me think that they must have mounted video cameras or something to the side of the turrets so that they could aim them. Then I realized that the video camera idea didn't really make sense because of how old the ship is. Maybe the military had advanced video camera technology back in the 50's and 60's. Seems unlikely, but I am not privy to that sort of probably classified information, so whatever. But then, as I walked farther along, I saw what appeared to be a hole and some stairs that would let a person enter into the actual gun turret. It was in a weird place so I wasn't sure that I was allowed to go in there, but I did anyway and lo and behold, this was the area from which people must have aimed the big guns or done something similar. It was cramped and dimly lit, but it was pretty exciting anyway. I went and looked at one of the breeches:

Pretty ridiculously large. I found a bunch of dials and stuff that clearly had much to do with the calculating of the correct angle at which the guns should be pointed:

Then, on my way out, I noticed some little holes in a tube that spanned the entire width of the turret. There was light coming out from them:

Then I saw a seat and realized what was going on here: mirrors to the outside! It was that stuff that looked like a video camera from the outside! There was one for each side and there was a spot where a person could sit view images from them both at once, I think:

I don't know for sure because the starboard side didn't work but the port side did sort of work and after much messing around with dials and knobs, I eventually got a recognizable picture to sort of blur through:

and

Pretty awesome huh!?! The same view as the dudes who once sighted/aimed this gigantic gun! For some reason that just blew me away. I had another similar experience later with the USS Drum, the submarine that was also available for touring. In fact, the entire experience was very similar. No special markings that anything cool would happen over in this area, just a sort of hidden ladder that went up to the periscope area.