Dreadnought

BB64 Wisconsin brief summary WWII.

The second Wisconsin (BB-64) was laid down on 25 January 1941 at the Philadelphia Navy Yard; launched on 7 December 1943; sponsored by Mrs. Walter S. Goodland; and commissioned on 16 April 1944, Capt. Earl E. Stone in command.

After her trials and initial training in the Chesapeake Bay, Wisconsin departed Norfolk, Va., on 7 July 1944, bound for the British West Indies. Following her shakedown, conducted out of Trinidad, the third of the Iowa-class battleships to join the Fleet returned to her builder's yard for post-shakedown repairs and alterations.

On 24 September 1944, Wisconsin sailed for the west coast, transited the Panama Canal, and reported for duty with the Pacific Fleet on 2 October. The battleship later moved to Hawaiian waters for training exercises and then headed for the Western Carolines. Upon reaching Ulithi on 9 December, she joined Admiral William F. Halsey's 3d Fleet.

The powerful new warship had arrived at a time when the reconquest of the Philippines was well underway. As a part of that movement, the planners had envisioned landings on the southwest coast of Mindoro, south of Luzon. From that point, American forces could threaten Japanese shipping lanes through the South China Sea.

The day before the amphibians assaulted Mindoro, the 3d Fleet's Fast Carrier Task Force (TF) 38-supported in art by Wisconsin-rendered Japanese facilities at Manila largely useless. Between 14 and 16 December, TF 38's naval aviators secured complete tactical surprise and quickly won complete mastery of the air and sank or destroyed 27 Japanese vessels; damaged 60 more; destroyed 269 planes; and bombed miscellaneous ground installations.

The next day the weather, however, soon turned sour for Halsey's sailors. A furious typhoon struck his fleet, catching many ships refueling and with little ballast in their nearly dry bunkers. Three destroyers-Hull (DD-350), Monaghan (DD-354), and Spence (DD-512)-capsized and sank. Wisconsin proved her seaworthiness as she escaped the storm unscathed.

As heavily contested as they were, the Mindoro operations proved only the introduction to another series of calculated blows aimed at the occupying Japanese in the Philippines. For Wisconsin, her next operation was the occupation of Luzon. Bypassing the southern beaches, American amphibians went ashore at Lingayen Gulf-the scene of the Japanese landings nearly three years before.

Wisconsin-armed with heavy antiaircraft batteries-performed escort duty for TF 38's fast carriers during air strikes against Formosa, Luzon, and the Nansei Shoto, to neutralize Japanese forces there and to cover the unfolding Lingayen Gulf operations. Those strikes, lasting from 3 to 22 January 1945, included a thrust into the South China Sea, in the hope that major units of the Japanese Navy could be drawn into battle.

Air strikes between Saigon and Camranh Bay, Indochina, on 12 January resulted in severe losses for the enemy. TF 38's warplanes sank 41 ships and damaged heavily damaged docks, storage areas, and aircraft facilities. At least 112 enemy planes would never again see operational service. Formosa, already struck on 3 and 4 January, again fell victim to the marauding American airmen, being smashed again on 9, 15, and 21 January. Soon, Hong Kong, Canton, and Hainan Island felt the brunt of TF 38's power. Besides damaging and sinking Japanese shipping, American planes from the task force set the Canton oil refineries afire and blasted the Hong Kong Naval Station. They also raided Okinawa on 22 January, considerably lessening enemy air activities that could threaten the Luzon landings.

Subsequently assigned to the 5th Fleet-when Admiral Spruance relieved Admiral Halsey as Commander of the Fleet-Wisconsin moved northward with the redesignated TF 58 as the carriers headed for the Tokyo area. On 16 February 1945, the task force approached the Japanese coast under cover of adverse weather conditions and achieved complete tactical surprise. As a result, they shot down 322 enemy planes and destroyed 177 more on the ground, Japanese shipping-both naval and merchant-suffered drastically, too, as did hangars and aircraft installations. Moreover, all this damage to the enemy had cost the American Navy only 49 planes.

The task force moved to Iwo Jima on 17 February to provide direct support for the landings slated to take place on that island on the 19th. It revisited Tokyo on the 25th and, the next day, hit the island of Hachino off the coast of Honshu. During these raids, besides causing heavy damage or ground facilities, the American planes sent five small vessels to the bottom and destroyed 158 planes.

On 1 March, reconnaissance planes flew over the island of Okinawa, taking last minute intelligence photographs to be used in planning the assault on that island. The next day, cruisers from TF 58 shelled Okino Daito Shima in training for the forthcoming operation. The force then retired to Ulithi for replenishment.

Wisconsin's task force stood out of Ulithi on 14 March, bound for Japan. The mission of that group was to eliminate airborne resistance from the Japanese homeland to American forces off Okinawa. Enemy fleet units at Kure and Kobe, on southern Honshu, reeled under the impact of the explosive blows delivered by TF 58's airmen. On 18 and 19 March, from a point 100 miles southwest of Kyushu, TF 58 hit enemy airfields on that island. However, the Japanese drew blood during that action when kamikazes crashed into FRANKLIN (CV-13) on the 19th and seriously damaged that fleet carrier.

That afternoon, the task force retired from Kyushu, screening the blazing and battered flattop. In doing so, the screen downed 48 attackers. At the conclusion of the operation, the force felt that it had achieved its mission of prohibiting any large-scale resistance from the air to the slated landings on Okinawa.

On the 24th, Wisconsin trained her 16-inch rifles on targets ashore on Okinawa. Together with the other battlewagons of the task force, she pounded Japanese positions and installations in preparation for the landings. Although fierce, Japanese resistance was doomed to fail by dwindling numbers of aircraft and trained pilots to man them. In addition, the Japanese fleet, steadily hammered by air attacks from 5th Fleet aircraft, found itself confronted by a growing, powerful, and determined enemy. On 17 April, the undaunted enemy battleship Yamato, with her 18.1-inch guns, sortied to attack the American invasion fleet off Okinawa. Met head-on by a swarm of carrier planes, Yamato, the light cruiser Yahagi, and four destroyers went to the bottom, the victims of massed air power. Never again would the Japanese fleet present a major challenge to the American fleet in the war in the Pacific.

While TF 58's planes were off dispatching Yamato and her consorts to the bottom of the South China Sea, enemy aircraft struck back at American surface units. Combat air patrols (CAP) knocked down 15 enemy planes, and ships' gunfire accounted for another three, but not before one kamikaze penetrated the CAP and screen to crash on the flight deck of the fleet carrier Hancock (CV-19). On 11 April, the "Divine Wind" renewed its efforts; and only drastic maneuvers and heavy barrages of gunfire saved the task force. None of the fanatical pilots achieved any direct hits, although near-misses, close aboard, managed to cause some minor damage. Combat air patrols bagged 17 planes, and ships' gunfire accounted for an even dozen. The next day, 151 enemy aircraft committed hara-kiri into TF 58, but Wisconsin, bristling with 5-inch, 40-millimeter and 20- millimeter guns, together with other units of the screens for the vital carriers, kept the enemy at bay or destroyed him before he could reach his targets.

Over the days that ensued, American task force planes hit Japanese facilities and installations in the enemy's homeland. Kamikazes, redoubling their efforts, managed to crash into three carriers on successive days-Intrepid (CV-11), Bunker Hill (CV-17), and Enterprise (CV-6).

By 4 June, a typhoon was swirling through the Fleet. Wisconsin rode out the storm unscathed, but three cruisers, two carriers, and a destroyer suffered serious damage. Offensive operations were resumed on 8 June with a final aerial assault on Kyushu. Japanese aerial response was pitifully small; 29 planes were located and destroyed. On that day, one of Wisconsin's floatplanes landed and rescued a downed pilot from the carrier Shangri-La (CV-38).

Wisconsin ultimately put into Leyte Gulf and dropped anchor there on 18 June for repairs and replenishment. Three weeks later, on 1 July, the battleship and her consorts sailed once more for Japanese home waters for carrier air strikes on the enemy's heartland. Nine days later, carrier planes from TF 38 destroyed 72 enemy aircraft on the ground and smashed industrial sites in the Tokyo area. So little was the threat from the dwindling Japanese air arm that the Americans made no attempt whatever to conceal the location of their armada which was operating off her shores with impunity.

On the 16th, Wisconsin again unlimbered her main battery, hurling 16-inch shells shoreward at the steel mills and oil refineries at Muroran, Hokkaido. Two days later, she wrecked industrial facilities in the Hitachi Miro area, on the coast of Honshu, northeast of Tokyo itself. During that bombardment, British battleships of the Eastern Fleet contributed their heavy shellfire. By that point in the war, Allied warships were able to shell the Japanese homeland almost at will.

Task Force 38's planes subsequently blasted the Japanese naval base at Yokosuka, and put one of the two remaining Japanese battleships-the former fleet flagship Nagato out of action. On 24 and 25 July, American carrier planes visited the Inland Sea region, blasting enemy sites on Honshu, Kyushu, and Shikoku. Kure then again came under attack. Six major fleet units were located there and badly damaged, marking the virtual end of Japanese sea power.

Over the weeks that ensued, TF 38 continue its raids on Japanese industrial facilities, airfields, and merchant and naval shipping. Admiral Halsey's airmen visited destruction upon the Japanese capital for the last time on 13 August 1945. Two days later, the Japanese capitulated. World War II was over at last.

Wisconsin, as port of the occupying force, arrived at Tokyo Bay on 6 September, three days after the formal surrender occurred on board the battleship Missouri (BB-63). During Wisconsin's brief career in World War II, she had steamed 105,831 miles since commissioning; had shot down three enemy planes; had claimed assists on four occasions; and had fueled her screening destroyers on some 250 occasions.

Shifting subsequently to Okinawa, the battleship embarked homeward-bound GI's on 22 September, as part of the "Magic Carpet" operation staged to bring soldiers, sailors, and marines home from the far-flung battlefronts of the Pacific. Departing Okinawa on 23 September, Wisconsin reached Pearl Harbor on 4 October, remaining there for five days before she pushed on for the west coast on the last leg of her state-side bound voyage. She reached San Francisco on 15 October.

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Fortitude.....The strength to persist...The courage to endure.