In March, the USS New Jersey set sail for the first time in over 24 years. It was not once again going off to battle, but instead to the location of its birth.
Commentary
The USS New Jersey’s 16-inch guns can create hell on earth by delivering 2.9 million pounds per hour of ordnance to targets more than 20 miles away. This is more ordnance than any other ship in the world can deliver over the space of an hour, including the aircraft of one of our supercarriers.
If you’re in the range of its 12 5-inch guns, that goes up to more than 3.3 million pounds of ordnance in an hour. And even today, there are only a few bunker-buster-type bombs in the world that can match or exceed the ability of its massive Mach 2, 2,700-pound
Mark 8 armor-piercing projectiles to penetrate super heavy concrete bunkers.
Historian David Crist, in his
book “The Twilight War: The Secret History of America’s Thirty-Year Conflict with Iran,” cites a Johns Hopkins Applied Physics Laboratory study that he was given access to and concludes “that the battleship could take eleven Silkworm missiles before being put out of action, and there were not enough missiles in the entire Iranian inventory to sink the forty-five-thousand-ton battlewagon.”
To put this in context, a single strike by a Silkworm, with its 1,000-pound explosive warhead, on any modern cruiser or destroyer would likely sink or mission kill the vessel. Even our biggest, newest unarmored USS Ford carrier would almost certainly be
mission killed and would stand a good chance of sinking after 11 Silkworm strikes. Hence, while certainly not unsinkable, the USS New Jersey is far tougher than anything sailing the seas today.
Another fun fact is that in the Gulf War, battleships such as the New Jersey were so feared that on
Feb. 27, 1991, Iraqi soldiers, recognizing that a battleship’s drone had spotted them, surrendered out of fear of being targeted and destroyed by the battleship.
Further, of the four Iowa-class battleships, the New Jersey is the most decorated, having spent the most time at sea, serving the United States in World War II, the Korean War, Vietnam, the Cold War, and the Middle East. And, while it has been serving as one of our nation’s premier naval museums since 2001, the Navy still has the right to reclaim it and reactivate it after giving 90 days’ notice to its current owners. Consequently, keeping it in good shape is a must.
On March 21, the USS New Jersey BBN 62 got underway and set sail for the first time in more than 24 years. It was not once again going off to battle, but instead, on
March 27, it returned to the location of its birth, the
Philadelphia Naval Shipyard, where it is receiving
$10 million in repairs that will ensure it can continue its mission as one of the United States’ premier naval museums. The fact that the Navy has retained the option to
take back the USS New Jersey during a time of national emergency means that these repairs will also help preserve the option of reactivating it.
Being a museum ship on a very limited budget, bringing its massively powerful (
254,000 shaft horsepower at designed overload) steam turbine engines online
capable of more than 33 knots would have been cost prohibitive, as well as prohibited by the U.S. Navy. Instead, four mighty tugboats maneuvered it away from its home at Camden Pier, 62 Battleship Place. A crowd of several thousand well-wishers watched as the ship left its post, where it had been on duty as an ambassador for the U.S. Navy
going on 23 years.
Despite Navy guidance that decommissioned/museum ships be drydocked for refurbishment
every 20 years, it has been almost 33 years for the New Jersey. During its drydocking, the New Jersey’s hull will be thoroughly inspected for integrity. Of particular interest are the 132 blanks (plugs)
installed at its decommissioning in 1991 to close off below-water openings. Once repairs are completed, the hull will be repainted.
It turns out that when the passive anti-corrosion system was installed by the U.S. Navy,
it was installed to protect against saltwater. Unfortunately, the Camden pier at which the New Jersey has been docked is on the Delaware River, which is mostly freshwater with a hint of brackishness. Consequently, to restore passive corrosion protection, the 1,204 existing zinc anodes bolted to the underwater portion of its hull will be replaced with aluminum anodes that work in fresh/brackish water and
will last longer.
Unless there is a major mind shift by the powers that control the Navy’s purse strings on what a fully modernized battleship brings to the table, it is unlikely that the USS New Jersey will ever be reactivated.
It is worth pointing out that while the USS New Jersey is owned by the New Jersey Homeport Alliance, the Navy has placed mandates/conditions on that ownership.
According to Ryan Szimanski, USS New Jersey Museum curator, as communicated
on the museum’s YouTube channel, “Preservative coatings like cosmoline were put on important equipment like the engineering systems, steam-powered equipment,” such as its boiler, steam turbines, etc., “so that they remain in pristine condition in case the Navy ever needed the ship back.”
Consequently, when it comes to the reactivation of the USS New Jersey, it’s probably safest to say, “Never say never.” Regardless, we can say with absolute confidence that the New Jersey is a fabulous naval museum ship and that we wish it the best possible outcomes for its time at Drydock No. 3.
Views expressed in this article are opinions of the author and do not necessarily reflect the views of The Epoch Times.
