Home Forums Hunting & Shooting Hunter's Campfire Battleship big guns .

For you handloaders, that’s 770,000 grains of powder per shot!

That 5 fps spread impresses me.

The Jersey was always an amazement to me. It's hard to imagine what those brave men thought on the USS Johnson when the Jap Battle wagons and Cruisers laid in to them. Talk about an adrenalin rush.

My CC in boot camp was GMGC Bender. I bet you guys crossed paths. Saw the Cruise Book from the one after that recommissioning

Some confusion probably comes from the ignitor charge of black powder sewn into a red quilted layer on the end of the silk bags. Red end of bags were loaded facing the breech, firing cartridge set off black powder which in turn ignited main smokeless powder charge. There was maybe a half pound or less of black powder for every 110 pound bag.

Modern artillery propellant charges like the 155mm howitzer still use a few ounces of black powder as an igniter.

Thanks Mike. Glad to hear from a non Google answer

"Guns as big as steers and shells as big as trees" never seemed like a very good analogy.

My father was on an LST in the SW Pacific and he said that at night you could see the red hot shells going overhead during the pre-invasion bombardment. I don’t know if the shells were from battleships or cruisers or both.

Hmmm, how's she group?

Not an onboard witness, but booms heard in DaNang were rumored to be Missouri sourced.

I heard those booms.

After this thread I spent an hour or so reading about the explosion on the IOWA.

What a disaster.

That would be per bag…..so 4,900,000 grains per shot
Don’t want a squib load

Equaling between 20-24 MILE/TONS of energy

Did you get the early read where they were crucifying one poor kid, or the later one where they rescinded that?

Personally, I'd wonder about replacing the turrets with VLS launchers, and replacing the boilers & engines with gas turbines. It would still be a fast, heavily armored ship, but now carrying hundreds of offensive & defensive missiles, with much longer range than the guns.

I've read stories of the naval battles of WWII and it always amazes me how many shells were fired and how far away they engaged. Seems like often there were several hundred firings during a naval battle in order to land a killing blow on the enemy. Imagine the magazine hold on the ship that had to hold all the ammo that ship could fire in a tour at sea . Did they have to return to port to restock or did they restock at sea?

During the Korean War a 156mm shore battery got lucky/unlucky and hit the USS Wisconsin

The captain delivered a full 9 gun salvo obliterating the battery.

A destroyer captain near by radioed the skipper of the Wisconsin “Temper temper Captain”

We didn't really do much underway replenishment during WW-II. In the Pacific, as we took islands back, they would start moving supplies forward to these advanced bases so stocks of shells, bombs and fuel could be picked up in places like Espiritu Santo and not have a trip back to Pearl. The SeeBees did a tremendous job building those bases in rapid fashion as we beat Japan back.

Uhhmmm.... no.

When I was 3 or 4 years old, dad took us to see the San Jacinto Monument where the battleship Texas was berthed.
I can remember wanting to go see it. At that age, my requests didn't carry much weight. We didn't go.

As for the New Jersey, a fellow i worked with told this story. True? I dunno? It was his story.
He was in the Navy. First day "in country" in 'Nam, he was so scared he could't sleep.
After a full day of duty, he was exhausted and fell asleep easily and fitfully.
His barrack sat on the top of a small hill.
Just at daybreak the next morning, a powerful explosion scared him so bad he ran out the back of the barracks and tumbled down the hill in his skivvies!
Once he realized he wasn't about to die, he made his way back to his barrack. Nobody seemed to be that concerned with the noise!
"What the hell was that?", he asked.
One of the guys that had been there told him, "No big deal. It's the New Jersey clearing her guns!"

A very few of my fellow USAF FACs got a chance to work the Jersey (?) against targets in the northern part of 'Nam. The difficulty was the difference in terminology between Army and Navy, but we all learned it, just in case. To a man, they said it was unforgettable. Call in the coords, give the firing instructions, then wait. A minute or so later, the ground simply erupted as bison-weight shells impacted.

It was difficult enough working Navy fighters against a target due to the terminology gap, btw. Navy versus USAF versus Army standards was a booger to remember when you are getting your ass shot at.