The Charles M. Braga Jr. Memorial Bridge, also known as the Braga Bridge, or simply, The Braga, is a through truss bridge that carries Interstate 195 over the Taunton River between the town of Somerset and the city of Fall River, near the mouth of the Quequechan River at the confluence with Mount Hope Bay.
Gallery
Sponsored
Location
2 explorers visited this place
200 m
USS Massachusetts, hull number BB-59, is the third of four South Dakota-class fast battleships built for the United States Navy in the late 1930s. The first American battleships designed after the Washington treaty system began to break down in the mid-1930s, they took advantage of an escalator clause that allowed increasing the main battery to 16-inch guns, but refusal to authorize larger battleships kept their displacement close to the Washington limit of 35,000 long tons. A requirement to be armored against the same caliber of guns as they carried, combined with the displacement restriction, resulted in cramped ships, a problem that was exacerbated by wartime modifications that considerably strengthened their anti-aircraft batteries and significantly increased their crews.
On completion, Massachusetts was sent to support Operation Torch, the invasion of French North Africa, in November 1942. There, she engaged in an artillery duel with the incomplete French battleship Jean Bart and neutralized her. Massachusetts thereafter transferred to the Pacific War for operations against Japan; she spent the war primarily as an escort for the fast carrier task force to protect the aircraft carriers from surface and air attacks. In this capacity, she took part in the Gilbert and Marshall Islands campaign in 1943 and early 1944 and the Philippines campaign in late 1944 and early 1945. Later in 1945, the ship supported Allied forces during the Battle of Okinawa and thereafter participated in attacks on Japan, including bombarding industrial targets on Honshu in July and August.
After the war, Massachusetts returned to the United States and was decommissioned and assigned to the Atlantic Reserve Fleet, Norfolk in 1947. She remained out of service until 1962, when she was stricken from the Naval Vessel Register. Three years later, she was transferred to the Massachusetts Memorial Committee and preserved as a museum ship at Battleship Cove in Fall River, Massachusetts. Some material was removed in the 1980s to reactivate the Iowa-class battleships, but the ship otherwise remains in her wartime configuration.
203 m
Battleship Cove is a nonprofit maritime museum and war memorial in Fall River, Massachusetts, United States. Featuring the world's largest collection of World War II-era naval vessels, it is home to the highly-decorated battleship USS Massachusetts. It is located at the heart of the waterfront at the confluence of the Taunton River and Mount Hope Bay and lies partially beneath the Braga Bridge and adjacent to Fall River Heritage State Park.
The memorial traces its origins to the wartime crew of Massachusetts, who fought to save it from being broken up and ensure its preservation as a museum ship.
The battleship forms a small cove which serves as a protected harbor for pleasure craft during the summer months. The Fall River Yacht Club maintains a dock nearby. The site also contains the historic 1920 Lincoln Park Carousel made by the Philadelphia Toboggan Company, PTC #54, originally located at Lincoln Park in nearby North Dartmouth, Massachusetts, restored by local vocational high school students and installed in a new pavilion in the early 1990s. A fairground organ provides the carousel's music. The type of organ is unknown, but it plays Wurlitzer 150 rolls.
225 m
USS Lionfish, a Balao-class submarine, was the only ship of the United States Navy named for the lionfish, a scorpaenid fish native to the Pacific and an invasive species found around the Caribbean. She was designated a National Historic Landmark in 1986, and is now on display at Battleship Cove in Fall River, Massachusetts.
236 m
Hiddensee was a Tarantul-class corvette. Originally a Soviet naval warship, the corvette was transferred first to the East German navy, then to the new unified German Navy, and ended her career in the United States as a non-commissioned naval ship. After decommissioning, she was later part of the Battleship Cove site at Fall River, Massachusetts as a museum ship, before being scrapped in 2023.
236 m
USS Joseph P. Kennedy Jr. is a former United States Navy Gearing-class destroyer.
The ship was named after Lieutenant Joseph P. Kennedy Jr., a naval aviator, son of the former U.S. Ambassador to Britain, Joseph P. Kennedy Sr., and older brother of future President John F. Kennedy. Joseph P. Kennedy Jr. served, with interruptions for modernization, until 1973. Among the highlights of her service are the blockade of Cuba during the Cuban Missile Crisis and the afloat recovery teams for Gemini 6 and Gemini 7. Joseph P. Kennedy Jr. is on display as a museum ship in Battleship Cove, Fall River, Massachusetts. She was added to the National Register of Historic Places in 1976, and designated a National Historic Landmark in 1989 as one of a small number of surviving Gearing-class destroyers.
The Braga Bridge spans 1.25 miles (2.01 km) and is one of the longest bridges in Massachusetts. Opened to traffic on April 15, 1966, it provides an important link between Providence, Rhode Island, Fall River, New Bedford, and Cape Cod.
Book your tour near
Charles M. Braga Jr. Memorial Bridge
Book Now
4.5
in partnership with
GetYourGuide.com