![]() ![]() ![]() “Her lookouts were on their toes, however, and as we charged in, we could see the dull red flashes of their five-inch guns shooting at us. Rear Admiral Roby’s account is as follows: On one particular morning, the USS Kidd approached the USS North Carolina for a surprise attack as the skies were still relatively dark and its crew was just waking up for the day shift. How the crew of the battleship being attacked could “win” would be to spot the attackers and fire “star shells” – flares fired from deck guns, essentially gigantic fireworks – that would illuminate the attackers from behind, a tactic that would give gunners an easy target to obliterate in real-world conditions. In the “game,” the destroyers would charge the targeted ship, fire a spread of torpedoes, and then “zoom off, making smoke and zigzagging erratically to avoid destruction by the battleship’s guns,” according to Roby. Roby, as the USS Kidd was cruising in the central Pacific with a task force en route to the Gilbert Islands, permission was given for battlegroups to conduct training exercises “as they saw fit.” One exercise in particular involved a destroyer division to charge a capital ship at high speed just before the end of the working day, “just before the daily call to darken general quarters.” ![]() In a recollection from Rear Admiral Allan B. ![]() The first damage the USS Kidd ever received was done by the guns of the USS North Carolina, completely by accident. According to first-person accounts in both the USS Kidd and the USS North Carolina’s records, the two ships once encountered each other in a training exercise. The destroyer, measuring 376 feet bow-to-stern, is dwarfed by the USS North Carolina, however – a fast battleship 729 feet long and displacing 36,00 tons worth of water. The ship’s era-appropriate fittings made it an ideal filming location for “Greyhound” and real-life counterpart for the USS Keeling. The vessel is notable for being the only surviving WWII-era destroyer in its original wartime configuration, complete with “ Measure 22” camouflage paint. The USS Kidd, a Fletcher-class destroyer that saw service is WWII, is a museum ship and National Historic Landmark berthed in Baton Rouge, Louisiana. ![]()
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