I saw the Battleship New Jersey unleash it's guns. Talk about shock and awe.
In '68 the Jersey was off DaNang about 20 miles.
We couldn't see it but the shells going overhead
into the Ah-Sha valley often sounded just like incoming rounds.
A little disconcerting, to say the least !
Gerhed,
Funny you mention the New Jersey, I'm currently reading 'Dear Mom: A Sniper's Vietnam' by Joseph T. Ward and he mentions they were deep in the bush and they were taking enemy fire. His skipper called for artillery strikes and fire command switched him over to the New Jersey. They were eleven miles inland and the Jersey was seven miles off shore. The coordinates were barely given before a 2,200 lb. shell flew overhead 'like an invisible freight train' and hit right on target. The skipper verified the hit and said 'have at it'.
'Our stomachs were pushed in and out from the shockwaves of the explosion.... In scant minutes, the New Jersey had placed sixtyy thousand pounds of high explosives exactly on target. The company broke into cheers as the hill literally disappeared.'
'When the ship called back to see if we needed more help, all the skipper couldl say was, "No thanks, New Jersey, there's nothing left to fire at".'
Another good story about these beasts comes from the book 'Crusade' by Rick Atkinson (an EXCELLENT read btw) that is about the 1st Gulf War. One story talks about the USS Wisconsin:
'Stan Arthur, the Navy commander on Blue Ridge, had spoken boldly before the war of firing the sixteen-inch guns "until their barrels melt". Lack of oppertunity and a belief that the shells would be needed to support an amphibious landing led to an initial conservation of ordinance. But Schwarzkopf's cancelation of Desert Saber' (amphipious assult) 'allowed the two battleships to unlimber with greater vegeance. So much steel raked the southern Kuwaiti coast that the CINC finally told Cal Waller, "Get hold of Stan Arthur and tell him to quit wasting ammunition hitting the same area over and over again".
Waller called Blue Ridge. "Cal, I understand your concern," Arthur replied, "but what the hell do you want me to do? The battleships are about to be decommissioned. I can take all these sixteen-inch shells and shoot them at the enemy, or I can take them home and put them in a museum." Waller laughed, as did Schwarzkopf, who issued a counterorder: "Have at it".'
By war's end, more than a thousand shells had fallen on the Kuwaiti shore. I would not have wanted to be on the other end of that!!!!
--xTalon
