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There is another USS Alabama, a WWII battleship, permanently docked at Mobile Bay, Alabama, that serves as a museum, which has also been occasionally used as a hurricane shelter. Most recently during Hurricane Katrina in which members of 18 museum employee families took shelter during the storm.
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The set used for the bridge of the USS Alabama was also used as the USS Georgia's bridge in Independence Day
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The dockside scene where Captain Ramsey (Gene Hackman) addresses the crew shows the USS Alabama in the background and, after his speech, the crew runs onboard. The sub was actually USS Barbel (SS-580), a conventionally-powered (i.e. non-nuclear) attack submarine originally commissioned in 1959. The sail ("conning tower") is a plywood mock-up that generally matched the real Alabama's. Barbel's original sail not only looked different but had already been removed (the Barbel was about to be scrapped).
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Before the crew loads the submarine, they do the "Roll Tide Roll" which is done before and during all the Alabama Crimson Tide games.
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Don Simpson and Jerry Bruckheimer originally offered Val Kilmer one of the headlining roles but he declined. Years later Kilmer noted it was one of the few films that he wished he had agreed to be in. The role offered to Kilmer by Simpson and Bruckheimer was never formally specified.
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