USS North Carolina (BB-55)

Moored on the Cape Fear River, USS North Carolina (BB-55) presents one of the most intact examples of an American fast battleship of the Second World War. As the lead ship of the North Carolina class and the first U.S. battleship built under the Washington and Second London Naval Treaty constraints, she embodies the engineering compromises and innovations of interwar naval architecture: a 35,000-ton treaty hull carrying nine 16-inch guns, powerful turbines rated at 121,000 shaft horsepower, and a carefully balanced scheme of armor, speed, and endurance. Wartime service in the Pacific—from screening carriers off Guadalcanal and engaging at the Battle of the Eastern Solomons, to supporting operations in the Gilberts, Marshalls, Marianas, and later Iwo Jima and Okinawa—left operational imprints still legible in her layout and equipment. Decommissioned soon after the war and narrowly rescued from scrapping in 1960, the ship now stands as a large-scale preservation effort in steel, illustrating both the logistical challenge of maintaining a capital ship in peacetime and the enduring interest in the battleship era within American naval history.