If you haven't visited Battleship Cove recently, you're in for a new treat: the museum has been installing oral history monitors throughout the battleship, with plans to install them on other ships as well.

Presently each monitor features an original crewmember at his battle station, chatting about his experiences on the ship. Some anecdotes offer surprising revelations about combat. Radarman George Southwick remembers, "Under battle conditions, I was on the surface radar all the time, and that took care of following the whole task force. You had to know the names of all the ships and keep track of where they were." In describing the air search equipment he says, "There was another switch on here that you push down. It gave you IFF, which is Identification Friend or Foe. And if the plane was friendly, it would show a dip underneath another dip and you'd know that it was friendly. Sometimes though the aircrew forgot to turn it on, so they got a lot of shots at them."

Other memories offer comical insights. Cook Harold Nye (above) describes the Chief Master at Arms, Jeff Breitenbach: "Well as you know, his stateroom was across from our galley… Invariably he would come out and tell us to keep quiet because we were here working at 5 o'clock in the morning, getting ready for breakfast. He was always at the cooks. And he would tell us he was going to put us on report, but if he put us on report there would be no breakfast. He was always perfumed up, and if you know Jeff - everybody would know him aboard ship - he was a prizefighter, so you didn't fool with Jeff, but oh, the perfume in that room. I still think when I go by there I can smell that!"

Meet the men of Battleship Massachusetts.

NOW ON VHS & DVD: They were ordinary men in extraordinary times: They were sailors, they were shipmates, they were heroes. Battling through the maelstrom of the Second World War, they were the men of the USS Massachusetts.

Battleship Cove has collected their stories, presented publicly for the first time in this, the premiere volume of Veterans’ Voices. This episode from the Living History Library shares the stories of Orrin Dana, Norman Davison, John Garriss, Jack Gibson, Harold Nye, Olav Sande, George Southwick, and Robert Webster as “Big Mamie” slugged through 35 major engagements in the Pacific tropics and the steely Atlantic. Filmed at each sailor’s station on board Battleship Massachusetts, these interviews chronicle the story of the ship that fired America’s first and last sixteen-inch projectiles in battle during World War II. Visit our gift shop to order.

THE SON ALSO RISES: If any man epitomizes American values, it is Senator John McCain. A distinguished veteran, statesman, and family man, this retired naval aviator has dedicated his life to national service, as his father and grandfather, both four-star admirals, did before him.

Click here for the interview with Sen. McCain.