NAVY: Biggest Roar Afloat

Steady, grim and forbidding in a wind-chopped sea, the new 35,000-ton U.S.S. North Carolina last week took a cruel final test such as no man-of-war had ever met before: two and three-quarter tons of powder exploded aboard her, flinging twelve tons of shells miles across the water.

By the touch of a button her blond, urbane skipper, Captain Olaf Mandt Hustvedt, gave her the works. Her answer was a belching, searing flame, the shattering roar of the heaviest broadside ever fired by any warship of any Navy on any sea. All nine of the 16-in. guns in her main battery, tripled...

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