Pacific Stars and Stripes information
for USS NEW JERSEY
For date 680306
USS NEW JERSEY was a US Navy unit
Primary service involved, US Navy
South Vietnam
Description: The following is an edited version of an article titled "These Guns Were Made for Talking" by Eugene R. Eisman.
Battleship New Jersey Readies Her Big Punch. Sitting in the stateroom from which Adm. William F. (Bull) Halsey Jr., controlled a powerful Pacific fleet during World War II. Capt. J. Edward Snyder Jr. pounded the edge of his open hand against a table. "This is not a game. We are being activated for a single purpose only - shore bombardment," the commander of this 45,000-ton battleship said. Snyder showed a visitor a plaque bearing the ship's motto - "Firepower for Freedom," and added: "This is exactly why we are being activated." The New Jersey's firepower is its nine 16-inch guns, which Snyder said can fire a 2,900 pound armor-piercing shell 20 miles with an accuracy of 50 yards. Cruising off the coast at a highly respectable 31 knots, the New Jersey will have much of the narrow waist of North Vietnam and the demilitarized zone (DMZ) separating the two Vietnams within range of its guns. The biggest guns now being used for naval bombardment of Vietnam are the eight-inch guns of heavy cruisers. In addition, the New Jersey has 20 five-inch guns equal to the largest weapons carried by destroyers. Since last August when the Department of Defense announced plans to take the New Jersey out of the mothball fleet and send it to Vietnam, 1,400 civilian workers at the Philadelphia Navy Yard have been working 16 hours a day, six days a week, to get it ready. At present, the gray, 887-foot battlewagon is tied up at Pier 6 of the Philadelphia yard. Preparing for its third war since it was launched one year to the day after Pearl Harbor, the New Jersey has proven wrong all those who thought the era of the battleship had ended. Still, there will be some changes when BB62-as she is known to the Navy-sails from Philadelphia in mid-May for a planned fall arrival off Vietnam. For one thing, instead of its World War II crew of 2,700, the New Jersey will sail with only 1,400 men and 70 officers, a complement set by the Defense Department. Snyder believes he can do the job with this number of men. An outspoken, confident Naval Academy graduate who served on another battleship during World War II and has earned four rows of decorations, Snyder said his crew "has the best morale I've ever seen." "This crew has been handpicked from veterans of battleship service and volunteers, and the crew of officers are magnificent," he said. To free as many of the crew as possible for manning guns and other combat stations, Snyder is looking for labor-saving devices, such as power scrubbers for the battlewagon's teakwood decks instead of having hundreds of men scrub the deck by hand. The New Jersey, deactivated in 1957 after action off Korea in the early 1950's is being completely repainted and Snyder is looking for "paints which don't have to be chipped and repainted frequently. But he expects the sides of the ship may need a new paint job after the New Jersey transits the Panama Canal this summer. "This ship is 108 feet, eight inches wide, and the canal is 110 feet wide. That means some scraped sides." Snyder estimates the cost of putting BB62 "on the line" off Vietnam at $50 million, including about $27 million for the actual reconditioning of the ship. The cost would be considerably higher if the New Jersey were being reactivated as a flagship. But, the staterooms used by Admiral Halsey when he commanded the 5th Pacific fleet in 1944-45 will remain empty, although Snyder is using them for an office during the demothballing. "I'm a taxpayer too, and I realize that there are not unlimited resources in this country," Snyder said of the decision to save money by drastically reducing the size of the crew. Snyder, who has never been to Vietnam, views the ship's prime mission as helping Marine and Army troops in South Vietnam with pinpoint bombardment of Viet Cong targets and cutting the loss rate of Air Force and Navy bombers over North Vietnam by shelling from offshore. Snyder was asked about the New Jersey's vulnerability to ship-carried missiles of the type used last fall by the Egyptian Navy to sink the Israeli destroyer Elath. "No other ship in the U.S. Navy is less vulnerable than the New Jersey," he said. "The armor plating is up to 17 inches thick. This battleship was built to take one hell of a lot of pounding." Later, standing on the battlewagon's bridge, Snyder added: "Don't take my word for it. This is the ship control (where key personnel gather when the ship is in combat). It has walls 17 inches thick. The pillbox-like control room, built into the bridge, has only two breaks in its armor-two small slits in front. Snyder pointed to two other battleships-the Iowa and Wisconsin-which sit, still in mothballs, about 100 yards from the New Jersey, and said that if his mission is a success, "there may be a decision to put the other battleships back in service." (The best known of America's capital ships, the USS Missouri, is in mothballs at Bremerton, Wash. The Navy said the New Jersey was chosen for reactivation over the other three because its communications and electronic systems were more modern). Snyder plans to operate his ship alone, without any escorting aircraft carriers or a destroyer screen. "When we need a capability we don't have, we'll bring it in," he said, "We aren't going to be proud about this."
The New Jersey's 40-millimeter antiaircraft guns have been removed, and Snyder does not feel they would do much good against today's fast flying jets. The guns were originally installed to protect against slow-flying Japanese aircraft in World War II. "Calling in a guided missile destroyer if we're attacked by enemy planes is both cheaper and more efficient than manning the 40-millimeters," he added. He does not necessarily expect the New Jersey to escape its Vietnam mission unscathed. "This is not a bridge party. Someone may get killed. It might be us," he said. Snyder spends his days walking from one end of the ship to the other, checking the vessel's progress. Below decks, the New Jersey looks anything but combat-ready. There is grease on some of the ladders and water on some of the decks. Pink and gray tile is being laid in the mess hall and crews' quarters; 104 air-conditioners are being installed around the ship, mainly in the 500-seat mess sand the areas where the triple-tiered crew bunks are located. Individual reading lights are being installed for the crew, and the walls of their quarters are being painted blue, light green, beige or sandalwood - whichever they choose. "This ship has almost everything you need to live in comfort for six months," Snider said. (UPI).
Photo Captions (1) Snyder (Photo of the Captain).
Photo Captions (2) The battleship's big 16-inch guns will be put into action off Vietnam (AP).
Photo Captions (3) New Jersey cruises off Korea coast in 1951 (Navy photo).
Photo Captions (4) New Jersey's giant propeller undergoes cleaning, tightening and polish job. (AP)
The source for this information was 6803pss.avn supplied by Les Hines
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Last updated
02/23/2000
Date posted on this site:
05/13/2023