since i first learned about it in grade school, i assumed it was a one of a kind warship...i was wrong. it spawned offspring used all the way up to WWII!
The Monitor and the Ironclad were really the progenitors of modern war-ships.
Their armored designs lead to improved armor piercing weapons of today.
The lines and concepts used were also the basis for early submarines like the USS Drum which much more closely resembled the monitor than ancestor submarines like the USS Hunley.
I wrote a school paper on the Monitor shortly after it's wreckage was found just to the south off Cape Hatteras.
Many pieces have been recovered from the wreck site including the turret and are on display at the Mariners museum in Newport News, Va. near where it and the Merrimac had the "first battle of the ironclads".
The design was a major advancement in Naval technology. It wasn't very seaworthy though since it sat so low in the water.
since i first learned about it in grade school, i assumed it was a one of a kind warship...i was wrong. it spawned offspring used all the way up to WWII!
ya know what, i have learned a lot on the internet. so much stuff of a trivial but interesting nature. things that never made books, historical developments that were never covered.
since i first learned about it in grade school, i assumed it was a one of a kind warship...i was wrong. it spawned offspring used all the way up to WWII!
One of the Vietnam War Mobile Riverine Force monitors, used for training only, survives today as an exhibit at the Navy's amphibious training school in California. The eight or ten that were part of Zumwalt's "Brown Water Navy" were turned over to the South Vietnamese Navy when we pulled out of Vietnam in 1973. I don't think any of them managed to flee when South Vietnam fell in 1975. No idea what happened to them; I presume they've been scrapped by now, if the South Vietnamese didn't scuttle them.
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