USS Wisconsin BB-64

"user314" (user314) 05/13/2020 at 12:00 • Filed to: #SHIPLOPNIK, Pics, Virginia, Norfolk

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USS Wisconsin, BB-64

Third of the four Iowa -Class battleships built for the USN in WW2, BB-64 was commissioned in April of 1944, and served with Task Force 38 in the 3rd Fleet and with the 5th Fleet. Owing to the Wisconsin ’s heavy anti-aircraft batteries, the ship was used to screen the carriers from deadly Kamikaze attacks when she was not shelling ground targets with her 16" guns. The Wisconsin softened up Japanese positions at Manila, survived !!!error: Indecipherable SUB-paragraph formatting!!! , covered amphibious forces at !!!error: Indecipherable SUB-paragraph formatting!!! , Formosa, Luzon and Nansei Shoto. The ship also attacked Japanese positions between Saigon and Camranh Bay before moving on to Hon K ong, Canton, and Hainan . She provided direct support during the Iwo Jima landings as well as attacked targets on the Home Island of Kyushu and on Okinawa. In the final months of the war, BB-64 attacked steel mills and oil refineries in Hokkaido and sites on the main Home island of Honshu itself. The Wisconsin arrived in Tokyo harbor three days after the formal signing of Japan’s surrender on her sister ship the Missouri , ending her service with five battle stars, 3 Kamikaze kills and 4 partial kills and had covered almost one hundred six thousand miles. As part of !!!error: Indecipherable SUB-paragraph formatting!!! , the ship embarked hundreds of GIs as she stood out from Okinawa for Pearl Harbor, then finally San Francisco. After several tours of South America and training cruises for most of 1947, the ship was mothballed, only to be recommissioned in 1951 to shell Chinese and North Korean positions. Here Wisconsin suffered her only hit by direct enemy action when a shell from a North Korean 152mm gun struck the armor on a 40 mm mount. The ship suffered no damage, and destroyed the offending battery with a full salvo from her 16" guns. After Ko rea the ship returned to training, serving without serious incident until May of 1956 when she collided with the destroyer Eaton in heavy fog.

The Navy replaced the damaged section with the matching piece from the incomplete USS Kentucky , returning the Wisconsin to service in only 16 days. The ship continued to serve in training cruises and exercises, as well as being called upon to sink a KC-97 Stratofrei ghter that had ditched after losing two engines, then floated for 10 days. The ship was returned to the reserve fleet in 1958, remaining there until 1986, when she was refitted with box launchers for Tomahawk and Harpoon missiles and put back into service. In 1991 she attacked targets in Iraq and Kuwait with those Tomahawks as well as her guns, now receiving targeting data from USMV OV-10 Broncos and her own RQ-2 Pioneer RPVs. In what was a first in warfare, Iraqi forces on Faylaka Island surrendered to the RPV, waving makeshift white flags.

The Wisconsin was retired for a final time in 1991, joining the reserve fleet in Philadelphia before being relocated to Norfolk in 1996 and opening as a museum ship in 2001.

Wisky’s port side, showing off one of her four 16" gun turrets as well as several 5" turrets and her bridge

The bow of the WisKy

Each bag was loaded with 110 pounds of D839 propellant, and a good crew could fire two rounds per minute per gun.

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Turrets One and Two from the bow.

Iraqi targets struck by shells from Turret 3

Targets on the receiving end of Turret 2

A Douglas A-4 Skyhawk, painted in Blue Angels colors.

Bow of the Wisconsin

For Sweden > user314 05/13/2020 at 12:05

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ah yes, the Big Cheese

CarsofFortLangley - Oppo Forever > user314 05/13/2020 at 12:06

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This is kickass. I love that it was fitted with box launchers and used to attack Iraq.

Really an incredible career for a vessel

Bandit > user314 05/13/2020 at 12:10

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I so badly wish these would get retrofitted with modern engines and systems and thrown back into service for no reason other than they’re the most American ships ever built. Sure shells are no match for missiles but they’re much cooler.

ttyymmnn > user314 05/13/2020 at 12:24

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My home town! I remember when none of the waterfront was developed. It was still warehouses and fish processors. Starting in the early 80s, they built Waterside, a clone of Baltimore’s Harborp lace. In the late 80s , Jacques Cousteau wanted to move his world headquarters to Norfolk, but he couldn’t come to an agreement with the city for some reason. Still, it was not uncommon to see Calypso moored downtown. So the city built Nauticus instead, the marine museum that now boasts the Wisconsin .

user314 > Bandit 05/13/2020 at 12:27

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As I understand it, the Iowa -class ships are to be maintained in a condition sufficient to reactivation pending a replacement, which would have been the Zumwalt -c lass. Since only thee ships were built, and the Advanced Gun System canceled, no such replacement exists, save the four Ohio -class SSGNs.

Now, if we had infinite money to spend, go for broke and rebuild all four as battlecarriers .

HoustonRunner > user314 05/13/2020 at 12:32

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We visited two years ago. My 9 years old twin boys still talk about it to this day, and still read the book on battleships regularly.

ranwhenparked > user314 05/13/2020 at 13:06

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They’ve all been stricken from the register now. In theory, they could be reactivated by the Navy in the event of an emergency, but that also applies to basically every ship in the US, and the lengthy time required to refurbish and refit them for service means that any emergency short of a years- long world war would most certainly be over before they could ever be used.

HammerheadFistpunch > user314 05/13/2020 at 13:36

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The pictures never do the scale justice.  I went and visited New Jersey last fall and it was pretty amazing in terms of scale.  Even the smaller gun casons are massive. Crazy big engineering.

For Sweden > user314 05/13/2020 at 13:47

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This...isn’t the worst idea I’ve ever seen.

WasGTIthenGTOthenNOVAnowbacktoGTI > ttyymmnn 05/13/2020 at 14:09

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I have family in  Norfolk that live on the Lafyette River. They took me (and other family) on their boat one time and we went along the backside of a bunch of warships. I was young, but I image this was one of them. They’re fucking huge from the water.

ttyymmnn > WasGTIthenGTOthenNOVAnowbacktoGTI 05/13/2020 at 14:29

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I had friends with boats who lived along the Elizabeth River, and we used to load the boat up with beer and head down the South Branch past all the huge shipyards. Always a good time. Stayed clear of  the Naval Base, though, which was probably a good idea.

WasGTIthenGTOthenNOVAnowbacktoGTI > ttyymmnn 05/13/2020 at 14:59

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T his was before 9/11, but there was still a big floa ting “fence” so you couldn’t get very close at all to the ships. Closer than you could get today I bet though.

ttyymmnn > WasGTIthenGTOthenNOVAnowbacktoGTI 05/13/2020 at 15:04

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Well, I’m talking about the mid-80s, so WAY before 9/11. Hell, I had a friend who lived on the Armed Forces Staff College, and the Marine guards at the gate  didn’t have clips in their pistols. I just had to tell them where I was going and they’d let me in. It was a little bit harder to get on the Naval Base, but not much. 

Turbineguy: Nom de Zoom > ranwhenparked 05/13/2020 at 15:30

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Then there’s the issue of the huge cost to refit (est $500M not including powder replacement ) and crew the ships with a complement of 1800 officers & sailors. The navy said the reactivation could take up to 40 months, but that’s assuming the 75 year old boilers and turbines are still serviceable .

Turbineguy: Nom de Zoom > HammerheadFistpunch 05/13/2020 at 15:36

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I’ve been on the USS Massachusetts a few times, and it’s massive. But the Iowas are massiver at 200' longer. 

Turbineguy: Nom de Zoom > ttyymmnn 05/13/2020 at 15:38

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From 1997-2000 I lived in Portsmouth RI, and used to take our boat down to Coddington Cove by the Newport navy base. The Iowa, Saratoga and Forrestal were all stored there, and looking up at those giants from a small boat made a real impression of just how big those carriers are. 

Hooker > user314 05/13/2020 at 15:40

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When my family used to live in Massachusetts, we would vacation in Sandbridge VA. We took many trips around the area over the years but some of my favorite were Nauticus and the Wisconsin! Thank you for the trip down memory lane and the write-up!

DarkCreamyBeer > Bandit 05/13/2020 at 20:25

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Even with modern engines they’d be way too crew intensive for the modern navy.

Also I have to disagree about them being the most American ships ever built. Quite a few could be candidates for such an honor, including the flush decker destroyers built in WW1 which served into World War 2, the “Standard” battleships which were distinctly American in design philosophy, the Yorktowns and Essexes which won the war with Japan, or modern Burkes, very much a symbol of American technical prowess and power around the globe (and imitated by the Chinese).

But to me the most American warships were the escort carriers. Ada pted from civilian designs, manufactured in huge numbers, effectively disposable but technologically sophisticated, and crewed by a bunch of regular smoes , they embody everything about  the American way of war.