The 57,500-ton battleship New Jersey, which once shot down 20 Japanese warplanes and pounded the beaches of Okinawa and Iwo Jima into submission, is back in action. This year, the 39-year-old battlewagon is negotiating the Navy firing range off the California coast, flexing her heavy-caliber guns. At 15 knots, signal flags snapping in the wind, the New Jersey’s decks are cleared because the huge force of her 16-inch guns is lethal at close range. Even on the bridge, 35 yards from the nearest gun, Capt. William M. Fogarty risks ruptured eardrums and must don “Mickey Mouse ears” for protection, though some salty sailors prefer cotton wads.
A Klaxon blares to indicate the firing is imminent. Huge orange flames and mustard-colored smoke burst from the guns sending shockwaves through the battleship. The titanic boom is followed by a hot air blast that ruffles the sheet-steel casing on the ship’s funnel. Below deck loose objects fly through the air, glass shatters.
The starboard guns of the fore and aft turrets have fired, sending two steel projectiles the weight of Ford sedans roaring into the air. The shells reach altitudes higher than the Rockies before falling seaward, where they raise glittering fountains. A few salvos are fired, then the spotting officer calls a “straddle-“shells have fallen on either side of the target. The order for rapid fire is given out, and all nine of the New Jersey’s guns are losing a torrent of steel at 16 tons a minute; the ship quakes beneath your feet, and its stem churns the sea to foam.
New Jersey’s ability to absorb punishment and deal out vast firepower made battleships masters of the oceans from the late 1860s until the mid-World War II era. As Lord John (Jackie) Fisher, First Sea Lord of the British Admiralty and sometimes called the father of the modern battleship, once warned, “If you are insulted at the dinner table, don’t throw the decanter stopper at the offender. Throw the decanter!” The New Jersey represents the maximum actor that can apply overwhelming force.
Notwithstanding the nuclear age and a procession of advanced technological military platforms, there is a reevaluation occurring regarding what a battleship can do. Last year, Congress approved funds for the B-1 bomber, the MX missile, and $325 million for reactivating the New Jersey and beginning the process with her sister ship, all part of President Reagan’s “rearm America” program. Eventually, the remaining two Iowa-class battleships, the Wisconsin and Missouri (the latter was the battlewagon on which the Japanese surrender was signed in 1945), are apt to rejoin the fleet at an estimated cost of between $1.5 billion and $3.5 billion.
The New Jersey recently passed a significant milestone when she was refloated from her West Coast dry dock with great fanfare. Iowa will undergo modernization later this year, retaining the square bathtub installed for President Franklin D. Roosevelt during his 1943 trip to Casablanca for the Teheran Conference. The Iowa-class battleships will be armed with both offensive and defensive missiles in addition to their original 16-inch guns.
The early nineties became a time of emerging new world order, as witnessed when the Soviet Union dissolved and the Gulf War erupted. Throughout January 1991, U.S. aircraft carriers positioned themselves near the Persian Gulf when the UN-ordered deadline was about to expire for Iraqi troop withdrawal from Kuwait. On 16 January, Tomahawk cruise missiles were launched by nine U.S. Navy ships, signaling the start of the liberation of Kuwait. The war in the gulf was rather short, with President Bush announcing on 27th February that Kuwait had been liberated, even as the UN sanctions against Iraq remained.
The breakup of Yugoslavia led to fighting in Bosnia-Herzegovina. American aircraft carriers patrolled the Adriatic, while U.S. airmen participated in UN relief missions and no-fly zones. In August 1995, a plane from Theodore Roosevelt bombed Serb military positions in Bosnia. Operation Deliberate Force had begun. The following December, peace was at least partly won when the Dayton Accords were signed. Operation Joint Endeavor was the military enforcement of that agreement.
The early 1990s also saw almost wholesale changes in the status of women in the Navy, as most restrictions on their assignment to aerial and naval combat were removed. In October 1994, Dwight D. Eisenhower became the first aircraft carrier to deploy with women permanently assigned on board.