Fellas,
Did my first bit of reenacting today
Joined up with the USS Alabama Living History Crew in Mobile, Alabama. We crew the lovely BB-60, a South Dakota class battleship. Today was incredible, spoke with a number of other folks as passionate as I am about naval history, fished an old pair of dungarees out of the supply area in the deep bowels of the ship and put them on (owned by a crew member, they were dirty, wrinkled, likely hasn't been touched in 50 years. I loved it
), was issued a helmet and a kapok life jacket. We had about 25 folks from the living history crew, a group of 8 or so marine re-enactors, and another 30 Sea Scouts who helped out. It was so much damn fun!!!
AND...
We simulated a freaking air attack against the ship... Which was holyzomgwhatthehellidontevenknowwhattodowithmyselfzorz amazing beyond words...
A pair of Yak-52s painted rising sun "meatballs" on their wings and fuselage and made three simulated attack runs against the ship!!! They flew in incredibly low and aggressivly, real intense! One pass was a strafing run from the stern, and the other two were simulated torpedo runs against the starboard side of the ship.
General quarters was sounded, and everyone ran to their battle stations. I took the position of a loader on one of the stern quad 40mm mounts. Our gun captain had an original "talker" setup with the big ol helmet and everything. We loaded the guns with a single clip of 40mm shells (had to pretend we had more so instead just passed that one around a few times). We were yelling out "HERE THEY COME!" as the planes made their passes, rising sun markings right in our faces. Simulated training the gun mount on them, ducking as they flew over. The marines had a handful of M1 Garands they loaded up with blanks and shot away from the planes from a 20mm gun gallery (which was AWESOME to have the pops of the .30-06s adding to the din of the aircraft motors and our gun crews yelling. Really added to the atmosphere of... well chaos).
We simulated a crew member getting hit at our gun mount. Yelled "corpsman!" yanked him off the mount and a litter crew came and took him away. Then we reshuffled to fill his position (awesome). On another pass our gun was "hit" we all yelled "Fire!!!" abandoned the mount then a damage control crew came over with a fire hose and sprayed the mount down (awesome). But the coolest thing about the day was on the final pass the planes released smoke, simulating they were hit and the entire damn ship (reenactors and public) started cheering and jumping "We got him! We got him!" Adrenaline was (and still is) flowing, hair was standing up on the back of my neck, it was just GAHHHHHHH AWESOME!!!!!!
So I wrote all this in one take. Probably makes barely any sense, or appears to have been written by a five year old on Christmas morning. Still too amped up to go back and proofread
(Edit: I did proofread...)
Here's a couple pictures I took of my setup. Don't have any action shots, I was too busy jamming 40mm shells into the gun to take pictures
