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  • BB History to go on display...

    News > Local Monday, Aug 6, 2007

    Massive guns find new glory

    Massive guns find new glory

    By Chris Rosenblum - [email protected]

    A forward guns of the USS Pennsylvania. Photos: Provided by USN.

    BOALSBURG -- More than 200 miles from the nearest ocean, the mighty guns of the USS Pennsylvania once again will point skyward.

    For decades, the battleship's 14-inch gun barrels have rested in a field at the Naval Surface Warfare Center in Dahlgren, Va., forgotten relics waiting to be scrapped.

    But thanks to a deal between the Navy and the Pennsylvania Military Museum, a memorial, not a meltdown, is in store for two of the steel behemoths.

    A year from now, they're expected to arrive at the museum's grounds to honor the onetime flagship that survived Pearl Harbor, a Japanese torpedo and an atomic bomb. Museum officials envision the barrels stretching almost 53 feet toward Boalsburg -- a two-gun salute to a warrior lying on the Pacific Ocean floor, scuttled in the end.

    "They're the last vestige of a great ship," said Dave Rhoades, a museum volunteer who has led the charge to obtain the barrels. "They can be saved, and they will be saved."

    It won't come easy -- or cheap.

    Before they're shipped by truck, the barrels must be thoroughly cleaned and sandblasted. Their weight, 66 tons each, will require a heavy-duty crane at both ends of the trip. All told, transportation costs could reach at least $55,000 in funds raised by the Friends of the Pennsylvania Military Museum.

    The Pennsylvania Historical and Museum Commission will contribute roughly an equal amount to mount the repainted guns on a concrete pedestal and house them in a partial mockup of a turret. Plans also call for a stone outline of the hull -- which could span two football fields -- and an exhibit of ship artifacts inside the museum.

    The main attraction, though, undoubtedly will be the massive tubes, once capable of hurling a 1,500 pound armor-piercing shell 20 miles in less than a minute. Picture a VW Beetle shot from Boalsburg to Lewistown.

    Joe Horvath, a museum educator, hopes visitors will imagine the sunny chaos of a Pearl Harbor morning or the roar and smoke of salvos launched toward Pacific islands, by inspecting and touching links to an epic time.

    "You can read books, but until you see one of the guns in person, you don't know what it was all about," he said.

    A legendary history

    She slid into the Chesapeake Bay in 1915, the pride of the Navy.

    BB-38, nicknamed the "Pennsy," embarked on her shakedown cruise a year later as the lead ship in her class of "super-dreadnoughts" -- four triple turrets, 14 inches of hull armor amidships, four propellers churning out a maximum 21 knots.

    After World War I, which she sat out, the Pennsy became the flagship of the Atlantic and Pacific fleets at different points, sailing the seas on maneuvers and training exercises.

    On Dec. 7, 1941, she sat in dry dock for repairs as the sun rose over Pearl Harbor.

    Bombs tumbled down, and the Pennsy's crew, among the first to react, sent streams of fire toward the Japanese planes strafing the docks. A blast destroyed one of her gun casements. Others shattered two nearby destroyers, flinging a torpedo tube back into the battleship.

    Across the water, her sister ship, the USS Arizona, detonated and swiftly sank with more than 1,000 casualties.

    Fifteen of the Pennsy's sailors died that day, but she lived to fight on. Attu and Kiska. Kwajalein. Enwietok. Pelieu. Saipan. Guam. The Philippines. One island at a time, she followed the bloody march toward Japan, her guns blasting beaches, ridges, jungles, even several Japanese tanks once.

    In support of the amphibious landings, she received eight battle stars and a Navy Unit Commendation.

    And one torpedo.

    It struck her off Okinawa, three days before the war's end. Twenty sailors died. A wide hole in her stern left her crippled, decks barely above the waves. Towed to Guam at first, she later struggled back to the Puget Sound Navy Yard.

    But her service wasn't done.

    At the Bikini Atoll, she withstood the fury of a nuclear test. So much radiation bathed her that the Navy had no choice.

    Her last voyage, in 1948, was to the bottom.

    Hidden treasure

    Fifty-four years later, the Pennsy figured in another mission.

    One day in 2002, an officer who had worked at the Naval Surface Warfare Center visited the Pennsylvania Military Museum with interesting news. He had discovered that some of the Pennsy's 14-inch barrels, removed during a 1945 overhaul, had been at the center since shortly after the war.

    Then came the kicker: The barrels were slated for recycling. Would the museum, the officer wondered, want them?

    Bill Leech, the museum director, was all ears.

    "I contacted my superiors in Harrisburg, and they thought it was a great idea," he said.

    Upon learning of the museum's interest, the Navy put a hold on the guns. Beyond that, however, it needed more time to sign on.

    Under the Navy's Artifact Loan Program, museums and other organizations can borrow archived or stored material for years -- provided the Naval Historical Center in Washington, D.C., approves. Among other criteria, the center examines a museum's finances and track record before lending objects.

    "We want to make sure they're displayed appropriately and accurately, and also that the (museum) has the means to get them where they need to be," said Mark Wertheimer, head of the center's curator branch. "Because we don't deliver."

    In this case, the Pennsylvania Military Museum passed muster.

    "The fact that this is an official museum of the commonwealth, it kind of gives that extra validity we need," Wertheimer said.

    For five years, Leech, his staff and a volunteer committee chased their dream, raising money, ironing out details with the Navy and the PHMC. They considered emulating the Imperial War Museum in London and mounting the barrels by themselves but liked the turret's appearance and teaching potential better. Costs nixed a third barrel to round out the battery.

    In the meantime, barrel No. 22L4, forged by the Midvale Steel Co. outside Philadelphia, waits alongside barrel No. 28L3 in Virginia grass. From different front turrets, both have remained intact -- unlike others in the yard that were either cut up or modified for tests.

    "It's great to be able to send them to someone who can display them," said Rebecca Sullivan, branch head of the Potomac River Test Range, which oversees the barrels.

    After the last notes of the exhibit's dedication ceremony fade next summer, the barrels probably will attract Navy veterans such as Bob Baldwin, a retired officer and museum volunteer. He looks forward to gazing at the history he helped preserve.

    "I'll be proud of the naval service in defense of the country, all the way back to the Revolutionary War," he said.

    Such responses are sure to please Leech.

    "We're really excited about this project," he said. "It gets us fulfilling our expanding mission to honor veterans of all the services, not just the Army. We really felt we needed to get a major naval exhibit out there, and we feel this will do that."

    Chris Rosenblum can be reached at 231-4620.

  • #2
    I often wondered if Bob Ballard or any of the others would explore Pennsy's wreck lying off Kwajalene (spelling). She was one beautiful ship and one that served her navy very well. Hopefully in the future they will undertake a mission to find all of Pearls battlewagons (except the wargraves Arizona and Oaklahoma) and show their present conditions. We know so many were scrapped when they came home to the states but so many were also scuttled outside of the Atomic tests and off Hawaii.

    Good article Rick!
    Fortitude.....The strength to persist...The courage to endure.

    Comment


    • #3
      Attn: RustyBattleship

      Hello, and good morning Mr.L.
      I have a most important question for you regarding this particular thread. (Battleships).

      1) Mr. L. can you direct me to the most renound authority on the Iowa class battleships as far as their ending history (specifically BB65 & BB66) and If new light can be shed about their remains who would investigate,research and who would respect the find as far as credit etc and how can I make sure that credit would be given and not assumed by the writer?

      I would assume that you are currently one of them and no disrespect intended if in fact you are the one thank you.

      I discovered something this morning (made the radar go off and hair stand up on my arms) that may be of interest to the die hards (authorities) and perhaps can add a final piece to the puzzle over one in particulars resting place as of present.

      If you would like to converse privately please feel free as until things are put in place I would prefer not to release said information.

      Much appreciated Mr. L.

      Dread.
      Last edited by Dreadnought; 28 Aug 07,, 13:49.
      Fortitude.....The strength to persist...The courage to endure.

      Comment

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