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Old 08-26-2019, 08:19 AM   #21
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10 miles from where I sit is the USS North Carolina. Same class as the Iowa, I think.

I took the tour by myself a few years ago. Spent a whole day crawling around the thing.

The level of engineering and craftsmanship on this vessel was incredible. A few times brought tears to my eyes. And this from an engr with shipyard/submarine overhaul experience in the late 80's. So I knew what I was looking at.

The machinery that made the big guns work was really impressive. Rapid shell and charge handling. As well as the analog computers that handled aiming and dynamic compensation for ship movement.

All I could say was.. Wow. I figured out why we won that war. Built good ships (and subs and airplanes), and built a lot of them.
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Old 08-26-2019, 08:45 AM   #22
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10 miles from where I sit is the USS North Carolina. Same class as the Iowa, I think.

I took the tour by myself a few years ago. Spent a whole day crawling around the thing.

The level of engineering and craftsmanship on this vessel was incredible. A few times brought tears to my eyes. And this from an engr with shipyard/submarine overhaul experience in the late 80's. So I knew what I was looking at.

The machinery that made the big guns work was really impressive. Rapid shell and charge handling. As well as the analog computers that handled aiming and dynamic compensation for ship movement.

All I could say was.. Wow. I figured out why we won that war. Built good ships (and subs and airplanes), and built a lot of them.
NC is similar, but not part of the Iowa Class (Iowa, Missouri, New Jersey and Wisconsin).
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Old 08-26-2019, 08:55 AM   #23
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Was ships company on the Peleliu (LHA-5) docked right next to the New Jersey in Long Beach, back in 85, short recommission . Was a big deal when Cher did a video on her, anyone remember that outfit she wore?
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Old 08-26-2019, 09:02 AM   #24
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NC is similar, but not part of the Iowa Class (Iowa, Missouri, New Jersey and Wisconsin).
Got it. Looked them up, NC and Washington were both in the NC class. Iowa class longer, more hp, more speed and more displacement. NC 35k tons, Iowa 45k tons.
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Old 08-26-2019, 09:25 AM   #25
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Was ships company on the Peleliu (LHA-5) docked right next to the New Jersey in Long Beach, back in 85, short recommission . Was a big deal when Cher did a video on her, anyone remember that outfit she wore?
Both can be found under “badass” in the dictionary 😎

As these ships were designed to go heads up against other dreadnoughts, we had many underway discussions about if a Harpoon or Tomahawk weapon would even penetrate the hull...
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Old 08-26-2019, 09:53 AM   #26
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Here are some aerial shots I took from 2009-2010 flying over the Naval Reserve Fleet, aka the Mothball Fleet. I count over 50 ships in the first shot. If you look close you'll see Iowa, #61.

Also, Giggitoni in Mahalo Moi passing the remnants of the MBF. We're down to 11 hulls left in the Naval Reserve Fleet on Suisun Bay...my local sturgeon hunting grounds.
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Old 08-26-2019, 10:05 AM   #27
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Along side BB62

I was serving on the USS Taluga AO-62 in the Guf of Tonkin during the late sixties and early seventies. A real treat one day when the USS New Jersey BB-62 pulled up for underway replenishment. She was alongside for many hours as we pumped bunker fuel, and high lined cargo deck materials to her.

I have photos somewhere back home, that I'll have to dig out after I get back.
Currently cruising in the PNW. The most awesome sight was her firing her guns at night, from somewhere over the horizon, and hearing the rumble and the horizon lighting up. Memories etched in my head.


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Old 08-26-2019, 11:04 AM   #28
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I drove my boat past the Iowa two days ago while perusing the harbor sights. It is currently in Los Angeles Harbor, San Pedro. I have been planning to go aboard but always seem to find something needing to be done on my boat.
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Old 08-26-2019, 11:16 AM   #29
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In the 80's and 90's I was pilot on FAA Flight Inspection airplanes (N265 Saberliners) conducting electronic calibration inspections on civilian and military navigation systems throughout the western states. One regular mission during the Cold War was the verification of shipboard and land-based TACAN and fire-control, search and precision approach radar naval aviation navigation systems. It was a real kick for a young civilian-trained pilot like me to be able to check the Navy ships following topside reconfiguration coming out of San Diego and Bremerton. We did them all....battleships, supply ships, aircraft carriers, and some I couldn't ID...all coordinated in secure comms to avoid Soviet detection. One mission had us flying an 10 mile alignment orbit at 1500 ft altitude around a TACAN positioned at the south end of the USN's San Nicholas Island off the CA coast.

When we got to the southern-most point in out 360 degree orbit, we began hearing very loud percussions in the pressurized Saberliner. It took a few moments to figure out that we were flying above Mighty Mo and she was lobbing her shells into the southern firing range on the island! There was a drop in the naval coordination that allowed this to take place as we were told by ATC that the firing range was "cold". They immediately ceased firing when it was brought to their attention. (I long thought that they saw us and just delayed their firing until we were overhead so they wouldn't harm us.)

What a SPECTACULAR sight to look down and see this occurring right under our feet in the early 90's following her recommissioning. It's a sight and sound I will carry with my for the rest of my days.

Unfortunately, this was well before cellphones and no cameras were available, but it looked a lot like the scene at 6:55 on this video on Mighty Mo.

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Old 08-26-2019, 11:40 AM   #30
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Got it. Looked them up, NC and Washington were both in the NC class. Iowa class longer, more hp, more speed and more displacement. NC 35k tons, Iowa 45k tons.
Right, and in all reality very, very similar ships with nearly identical capabilities in real-world use - often overlooked. There was a class in between those two, commonly called the 'SoDak' for the lead South Dakota, also a four-ship class like the Iowas. Unfortunately the NCs and SoDaks get overlooked a bit in history. All seriously capable ships; all superior to anything else ever built.

Very impressive how naval architects, mechanical engineers, electrical engineers and physicists (because the cutting edge electronics had a lot to do with their edge), and of course the sailors and officers came together in a few short years to put together such superlative systems.
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Old 08-26-2019, 01:18 PM   #31
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I toured USS New Jersey once. It must have been a hell of a thing to see those big ass battlewagons knifing through the sea at 33+ knots.
When we did full power trials on the Iowa, I made it a point to go all the way aft and look UP at the wake and the four props (two four-bladed and two three-bladed) stirred up the ocean.
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Old 08-26-2019, 01:22 PM   #32
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Observed the Iowa in Suisun Bay as part of the reserve fleet as well as in Richmond while in preparation for transfer to Southern California. I was amazed how the ship was dwarfed by surplus freighters neighboring in Suisun Bay. The Iowa was very compact, a small target, compared to its surplus neighbors.
You should have seen the NJ sitting astern on an aircraft carrier at North Island in San Diego Bay in the late 80's. It looked like a panther about to pounce on a big cardboard box. BBs are not designed to carry lots of bulky stuff like planes and cargo, so they are naturally lower to the water.
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Old 08-26-2019, 01:23 PM   #33
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Took a tour of the Missouri at Pearl Harbor. Between that, the Arizona Memorial, and the Pearl Harbor Memorial, it would be near impossible not to be moved.

Ted
Beginning and the end of the war within yards of each other.
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Old 08-26-2019, 01:29 PM   #34
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Truly badass...especially seeing the New Jersey (sister ship) fire a 9 gun broadside salvo out of the 16” main guns.

Still hard to wrap my head around a gun firing projectiles the size of a small car...
Just the weight of a small car, not the size. These are some 1800-pound high explosive round waiting to be lowered down into turret one on Iowa in 1985. We shot lots more of these than of the 2700-pound AP rounds. Most of our 1200 rounds we carried were HE. We even used different powder for the two; 16"/50 powder bags for the heavies and remixed 16"/45 bags for the HE. The remixed powder burned too fast to put it behind AP rounds.
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Old 08-26-2019, 01:37 PM   #35
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I always liked this shot I took of Iowa from one of the Army Hueys we carried for a few weeks while off Central America in 1985. This was off El Salvador in the Pacific.
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Old 08-26-2019, 02:10 PM   #36
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Here is a part of the ship nobody ever sees, lower annular space of turret 2. Due to its extra height, turret 2 was the only turret with two projectile decks. The monorail and chain hoist seen here form a link in the rearming sequence for projectiles. Each turret was trained around to a specific azimuth in order to line up hoist projections on the turret tops with two loading scuttles in the deck. Sheaves were rigged to the projections on each turret with wire rope running from an electric winch up through it and down to special projectile carriers. We wheeled the projectiles one at a time under the rig and attached the carrier to the horizontal projectile. It was then raised up several feet so that the crew could flip the projectile upright to be lowered down through the circular scuttle ALL THE WAY down to the bottom of the ship where the carrier and its projectile were attached to a monorail like the one shown in the photo. Then this combo was pushed by hand along the rail and through the bottom of the turret barbette until it arrived under the projectile hoist in the projectile deck, several decks up in the turret. There the projectile was placed on a bare steel, unpainted and greased outer ring (the part which did not rotate with the turret) deck after which it was parbuckled into the inner ring using a piece of rope with a special hook which was inserted into one of many convenient holes in the deck and one of six constantly turning gypsies. The inner ring was rotated to move the projectile around to a vacancy in the outer ring where the projectile was parbuckled back out to the outer ring for storage. When the outer ring was filled, the inner ring was loaded up. Before we commissioned the ship in Pascagoula in 1984, we had a limited time in which to practice this and to become familiar with all the moving parts as well as getting every hoist, wire and carrier load tested. It is a testament to the crew of that ship that on the day after we got underway from Pascagoula, we met an ammunition ship in the Gulf Of Mexico and in a day and a half alongside her at 12 knots using equipment left unused since 1956 we emptied her of 1,200 rounds on 16-inch and 14,000 rounds on 5"/38 ammunition and safely stowed it without so much as a stubbed toe. The whole process reminded me of loading my .50 caliber Hawken muzzle loading rifle and was INTENSELY manpower hungry.
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Old 08-26-2019, 02:20 PM   #37
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And when it was all over, I got my department officers together in the Weapons Office down on the second deck to critique the most recently accomplished miracle and contemplate the next incredible demand upon us. BTW, the bulkhead behind me is slanted inward as part of the armor projection of battleships. Beyond that slanted armor is another compartment for fuel or dry stores storage and then the vertical side of the ship. The theory was that an incoming battleship projectile would pierce the outer skin and then hit this slanted armor at an angle sufficient to deflect it downward rather than allowing it to travel farther into the ship's innards. I apologize for not being able to rotate some pix.
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Old 08-26-2019, 02:34 PM   #38
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16-inch powders were removed from their canisters in the powder magazines and laid onto a shiny brass tray and then slid over to a passing scuttle through the bulkhead and into the annular space where they were rolled across a spanning tray to a second bulkhead scuttle. To help prevent any spark potential getting into the powder magazine, the two scuttles were never opened at the same time. The 110-pound powder bags were hand carried across the deck, maybe 15 feet or so including crossing over the half-inch gap between the fixed structure of the ship onto the rotating deck attached to the turret itself (try that sometime while the ship is turning and the turret is training!) to be loaded into the double decker powder car for a total of six bags per gun. I doubt you will ever see any other photo of a fully loaded powder magazine.
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Old 08-26-2019, 02:56 PM   #39
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Rich in the photo that Angus posted in post 1 of this thread, it appears that the ship is moving sideways from the recoil. I’ve heard that the ship did not move sideways but that the illusion of movement is caused by the blast wave from the guns reflecting off the hull.

Did the ship move sideways when you fired a broadside? Did the ship want to roll?
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Old 08-26-2019, 03:37 PM   #40
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It's a common misconception that the ship would roll or move sideways, but nothing of the sort happened. If there had been sideways movement equivalent to the blast, I guess every man aboard would have fallen down. Remember, we drew over 30 feet of water. The gun recoil system (four feet of recoil for the 16s) absorbs the kick; so no roll. The blast flattens the water and bow wave making it look like there is sideways movement. When I was on the flying bridge the blast was mind-numbing, but when I was down in gun plot on the second platform deck, the blast was muted to a rumble.
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