On the 65th anniversary of the Japanese surrender in World War II, local ham radio operators will try to link up historic battleships that served in the Pacific Theater.
Members of the Azalea Coast Amateur Radio Club will be aboard the Battleship North Carolina on Thursday night. Using original radio gear from the 1940s, they plan to establish radio contact with the battleship USS Missouri, anchored at Pearl Harbor in Hawaii, at 9 p.m. local time.
Anchored in Tokyo harbor, the battleship Missouri was the site of the surrender ceremony on Sept. 2, 1945, formally ending hostilities.
“We have been in touch with the USS Missouri and we have set a schedule to communicate between the two ships when propagation is best,” said Azalea Coast club member Charlie Vaughan.
Some of the vintage radio equipment is on loan from an amateur radio operator in upstate New York, Vaughan said.
Now preserved as a war memorial and floating museum on the Cape Fear River, the USS North Carolina was the first American battleship to enter Pearl Harbor after the Japanese attack on Dec. 7, 1941. It participated in every major naval offensive in the Pacific and earned 15 battle stars.