I took a "hard hat" tour with the curator today through the #3 turret. The #3 gun house is accessible from the main deck, where you can see the gun pits and the rifle breeches, as well as locally controlled targeting equipment. What I've always wanted to see was down inside the turret and in the gun pits, where the gun crews worked. The #2 turret is largely opened to the public (with the exception of the gun pits and center spaces). However, during the last hard hat tour I took with the curator, he mentioned that the #3 was a bit different than that the #1 turret that we visited. The main difference was the powder handling space had a fairly low overhead and the turret was generally more compact. Right then I chalked that up for a future tour.
I lifted this diagram from Wikipedia to better show where we went. Unfortunately, the labeling didn't come out very well. The gun house is what you see on deck with the 16" rifles mounted in them. The turret is the whole assembly that fits down into the barbett, which is a heavily-armored conical fitting built into the ship's construction to support the massive weight of the turret assembly. The turrets sit on roller bearings and are driven by electric motors. I've seen it written that the 16/45 turret assembly weighs 565 tons, so just the main battery accounts for almost 5% of the ships unloaded weight. Interesting side note; when battleships are sunk in deep water and capsize, the turrets usually fall out of the ship.I arrived a little early so I could wander around before I met with him, but I bumped into him in the ship store, so we just started early. Getting to the #3 turret is a lot more difficult than the forward turrets. The forward turrets are accessed by simply doing down three decks and walking forward a ways. Not so for the aft. We went down about two decks, then down broadway to the ordi-folks' berthing under the enlisted galley. That was the easy part.
Once we got to aft berthing, he opened a hatch and we climbed straight down three more decks through this deck hatch. The ladders a are bit precarious in the dark, and a little oily too. I pulled an idiot move and forgot my flashlight in the car. Thankfully the curator loaned me one.
After climbing over a giant knee-knocker, we were in the #3 turret powder handling space. He wasn't kidding about the low overhead. 
Notice how much lower it is in comparison to even the #1 turret powder handling space (shown above). For reference, compare the distance between the overhead to the powder hoist doors. The #2 turret powder handling space (not shown in this post, but can be seen here) is luxury condo by comparison.
To get to the lower shell handling space in the #2 turret, you climb up an inclined ladder. In the #3 turret, you climb this. This ladder is inside the tubular center compartment where a good portion of the machinery for rotating the shell hoist ring and parbuckling capstans is located. The curator said that those ladders in #2 were not original and were put in to help tourists get in there. I can see why.
This is the lower shell stowage space. Look closely and you'll pick out a few features. First, notice the three rings that make up the deck. The innermost ring (in the left of the picture) rotates with the turret when it trains the guns. Next, the center ring, which has the bell-shaped parbuckling capstan, rotates independently and is also where the shell hoists are attached. These hoists could be rotated to pick the next shell from either the inner or outer shell ring. The outer ring was stationary. Parbuckling is what maneuvering the shell is called. It's done by means of a line around the shell that is also partially wound around the capstan on the deck. The capstan turns to pull the shell while the gun crew would manually guide it to where it needed to go. Those shells weighed about 2k lbs a piece. Watch your feet!
Back up that center ladder and into the upper shell handling space. Looks a lot like the lower shell handling space, but here we saw some really interesting things. Notice the ladder on the center ring. Problem was, there are three of them, so figuring out which one took us to the gun pits was a challenge. There was also a small hatch on the outer bulkhead, that allowed access to...
...this! You're looking at the space IN BETWEEN the turret and the barbette. It goes up a whole lot further than this picture makes it look. The flash just didn't cut it here. Those bolt heads on the right (the silver ones) are larger than the span of my hand.
This was great too. What you're looking at is one of the training gears that turns the turret assembly. Like most things responsible moving that much weight, it's really big. The nuts shown here are also about the size of my open hand. You have to look hard to discern what you're looking at, but just above the large nuts is the gear. The flash reflected off of one of the teeth on the turret ring (top of picture, just left of center) that the gear meshes with.
Back up the center space ladder, to see what we could see. We saw an operator station, and it wasn't readily apparent what it is was for. I was coming through a couple of pretty tight spaces to get there, so this low angle seemed like it gave the best perspective for size and space. We got twisted around a bit, but it turns out we were in the mechanical deck just below the gun pits. It was really tight and dark, so I'm guessing doing maintenance down here would have been pretty rough.We went back down into the upper shell handling space, climbed up one of the ladders on the center ring and into another tight space that connected all three gun pits. The first one we crawled up into was the port side gun pit.
He let me go first, and when I shined my light up, I was shocked by what I saw. So far, this trip had been a little like cave exploring; working through small spaces that open up into giant caverns. Coming into the bottom of a gun pit felt much the same. The breech end of the gun is massive, and it's tough to tell from this shot how big it really is.
Looking backward from where I was, I could see the top of the shell hoist, as indicated by the folded spanner tray (at the top, and to the left of the ladder), along which the shell and powder are rammed into the breech.
I climbed up to look around, and I saw down the shell hoist. This leads down to the shell handling space(s) on that center ring.
Here's the rammer operator's station. He stands a few inches from the gun when it recoils.
Looking down from the the gun captain's position. That hatch at the bottom of the ladder (look hard, it's waaay down there) is where we came through. Notice the red line marked on the left bulkhead. That marks the arc the end of gun takes when it recoils. If it had gone off when I came through, I'd be all done.
This shot is taken STANDING ON TOP OF THE GUN. That was really cool to see. You can see the shell hoist (the tube in the center), the powder car door is on the right, and the rammer operator's station to the right of the shell hoist. Also, there is a hatch on the upper left of the shot that allows access from the gun house.
Here's a shot showing the space where I was standing. Notice the opening on the left. Saw something interesting in there, but I've been sworn to secrecy. Sorry.We worked our way all the way down to the powder handling space and back up to the main deck to get into the gun house. Seemed like the scenic route for sure, but I can't complain about seeing more of the ship.
He let me into the restored starboard side gun pit, where I got a couple of shots that the plexiglass usually ruins, but I really liked this one.
I spent most of the rest of the day on the ship, but this was definitely the highlight of my time there. It was great getting to check out the nuts n' bolts that kept the aft "three fingers of death" operating.
