World Affairs Board - View Single Post - USS New Jersey in Lebanon Channeling Thread

Shipwreck · 03-20-2008, 05:55 AM

(Emphasis added) :

Quote:

WAR IN THE GULF: The Weapons; A Warhorse That Fires The Heftiest of Shells

By KEITH BRADSHER, The New York Times
Published: February 5, 1991

The United States Navy called on a former floating museum yesterday to join the battering of Iraqi troops in Kuwait.

The Missouri, the Brooklyn-built Iowa-class battleship on whose decks Japan surrendered to General of the Army Douglas MacArthur at the end of World War II, sent seven shells, each the weight of a small car, shrieking toward enemy bunkers. It was the first time since the Korean War that the ship had fired its 16-inch guns in battle.

The shells from an American battleship can penetrate stronger fortifications than any other conventional shell, bomb or missile on earth, said Robert F. Sumrall, the author of "Iowa Class Battleships." Lobbed to a height of 40,000 to 50,000 feet over a distance of up to 20 miles, the shells come down with enough force to punch through 35 feet of steel-reinforced hardened concrete.

The Reagan Administration's decision to return the four Iowa-class battleships to active service in the mid-1980's was controversial because of the cost. An explosion in one of the 16-inch gun turrets aboard the U.S.S. Iowa killed 47 people on April 19, 1989. The Iowa was decommissioned last October and the New Jersey is scheduled to be decommissioned this month, which will leave the Missouri and the Wisconsin as the only American battleships in active service.

Military experts describe the 16-inch gun as a little less accurate than a laser-guided bomb. During a practice exercise, the Iowa once fired 27 shells within three and a half minutes, and all landed in an area the size of a football field at a range of 18 miles, said Mr. Sumrall, a retired chief petty officer who served aboard the vessel then.

But the 16-inch guns of the New Jersey proved inaccurate at times when used to pound the coast of Lebanon in 1983, said Kenneth J. Hagan, a professor of naval history at the United States Naval Academy at Annapolis, Md.

The Missouri's armored hull can withstand a direct hit from such Iraqi weapons as the Exocet missile, Mr. Hagan said.

The Brooklyn Navy Yard built the Missouri in 1944 to survive long-range artillery duels with Japanese battleships using armor-piercing shells similar to its own.

The Pentagon paid $476 million to refurbish the Missouri and recommissioned it in May 1986. The battleship had spent 30 years in Puget Sound, Wash., as a floating museum and administrative center for mothballed ships.

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