Did you serve on a battleship?

jeffsmith said:
The Three US Battleships @ Normandy were
Arkansas, Nevada & Texas
Older ships with 14 inch guns

Still Formidable but not like the later Battleships
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There were also 4 British Battleships at Normandy, but I couldn't tell their names without looking them up. Obviously the Hood wasn't one of them. ;)
 
We sat behind Chris for several years in church. He was a steward on the Missouri when the Japanese signed the surrender. Cool old dude. Said he almost peed his pants when the Japs came aboard. Unfortunately, he has passed away.
 
badge said:
While I did not serve on her, when the USS Iowa was in Port Everglades in 1983 I was able to get a guided tour. I had the occasion to do several Swabbee's a favor and was rewarded with said tour which was ost impressive, even meeting the Capt. in the Bridge. One area I was admonished to stay out of was the orange ringed area with the two Marines patrolling as if crossed they would react. It was a very eye opening tour and made more enjoyable by our men serving.
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Please expand on the orange ringed area and Marines, I have no guess
as to what it is.
 
Alabama Tour Remembrance

I toured the USS Alabama a number of years ago. One of the tour guides took me to the battle bridge ( believe that was the name?). Was very heavily armored up there!
You were in a room about the size of a large closet with a low ceiling. You looked through horizontal ports I guess about 6" high and a foot or so wide. The thickness of the armor was apparent, 15"thick per website! It was like looking through a telescope backwards. The gentleman guide probably told me, but my claustrophobia was really cranking up! I would imagine that if another battleships shell, 12", 14"or 16" hit near there you would end up like spam in a can!!! Didn't the IJN battleship the Yamamoto have 18" guns? I would bet even bet a cruisers 8" shells would wring your bell if a hit occurred nearby.
Brave men serving in the naval ships!!
 
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Yamato and Musashi were sunk from the air.
Imperial Battleships
Saw the USS Missouri in Long Beach harbor, it was small compared to a nearby oil tanker.
The bombs that destroyed Hiroshima and Nagasaki did NOT vaporize the cities, there were survivors at the military barracks in Hiroshima, which was at ground zero. Of course they didn't live long and died from burns. Fires and the blast pressure destroyed each city and radiation killed some of the population.
 
Dave_n said:
Aside from some of the battles off Savo Island which were BB versus BB and Suragao Strait (spelling) where USN veterans of Pearl Harbor met up with a rump of the IJN, there were no other BBs versus BBs.
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Well, you had the battleship Bismark sinking the Battlecruiser Hood, then getting sunk by the remaining Royal Navy, including the battleships King George V and Rodney, in 1941. The battleship Duke of York sunk the Battlecruiser Scharnhorst in 1943

In the Med, at the Battle of Cape Matapan, the British and Italians had a battleship action, almost.

And then there was WW1, too.
 
I had a chief who was a FT1 that was on the big "J" in Nam.
They fired on a SAM base on an island in Haiphong harbor.
He said after mutable rounds, the spotter said to cease fire as the target was no more... :)
 
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I was lucky to see the Cruisers Springfield and Albany and Newport News (spelling on the last one) while at sea. beautiful ships. I believe that right after WWII we had the largest number of surface combat ships of any country. Think we are down to about 300 or so from Ronald Regans 600 ships. Frank
 
I was born a couple months after the Missouri was decommissioned. Did my first deployment on an LPD, the New Orleans


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I remember dad taking me down to Ocean View beach in Norfolk in 1950 to see the USS Missouri when she missed the ship channel and was aground off of Old Point Comfort in Hampton Roads. I've toured the USS Wisconsin also in Norfolk.

Talk about magnum rifles! 2,700 pound AP projectile at 2,500fps. That's 131,134 foot/TONS of muzzle energy!!
 
I never served on a battleship (Army guy) but I was in a Swift Boat coming back south when the New Jersey decided to shell a target inland. I though the sun was rising in the east and then a whole bunch of what sounded like freight trains flew over us. Then we got to watch the sun set in the West. All of this happened about 1AM. I was impressed. I've been on the Missouri a number of times, it was docked in Bremerton Wa which is a short ferry ride from Seattle so my Marine dad took me there often.
 
I was taking an early morning swim off Lantana beach in Florida one morning. As I was leaving I saw the USS New Jersey (IIRC) about 10 miles off shore being towed to New Orleans (I learned later). I did a double take, as I had no idea an Iowa class was due to pass by the coast; I was in the right place a the right time. Hard not to recognize that silhouette!
 
Abbynormal said:
Please expand on the orange ringed area and Marines, I have no guess
as to what it is.
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Prohibited zone, guarded by Marines.

A midshipman I knew did a cruise on the USS Intrepid. He and another middie went below to the Coke machine, which sat just outside of the magazine (ammo storage area, including nukes). An alarm went off. The Marine's berthing area was directly across the passageway from the magazine. When the alarm went off, a hatch (door) popped open and a smallish Marine in his skivvies jumped out, racked a 1911 and shouted, "DON'T MOVE!!".

They didn't.

When the area was secured, the Marine looked at the middies and said, "Just in case you thought I was kidding...". He dropped the mag out of the 1911 and racked the slide. My buddy said that when that .45 ACP round hit the deck, it sounded like thunder!!
 
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GA 1911 said:
It explained very well in "The Last Stand of the Tin Can Sailors".
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Sadly, it occurred because of one of the greatest examples of American bungling by Adm Halsey, and what should have been the annihilation of the Japanese fleet turned into a heroic stand by ships that were able to bluff the Japanese into turning tail by sacrificing a whole lot of men that should have lived long lives.
 
No, but all the COAST GUARD ships I served on could fit on the deck of a BB at the same time!!! So there! If it's deep enough for a battle ship, we went out to far!!!
SEMPER PARATUS
 
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