USS Iowa to Fire Guns For Hawkeye Pep Rally

WHO tv ^ | December 23, 2015 | Roger Riley

[Bull Snipe]

Over hardening, makes armor steel brittle. The Russians have had that problem with their tank turrets since WWII.

[going hot]

especially for the receivers.

[Loud Mime]

A friend of mine worked on the Iowa. He said that when they fired all 9 that soon afterwards you could see all sorts of fish floating up; dead. He hated seeing the dolphins die that way.

[Jimmy Valentine]

Our armor plate using Nickle steel was the best out there. Highly resistant to pretty much any shell fire.

[tanknetter]

The fear with the Iowas in the 1980s was an under-the-hull proximity torpedo hit. Create a big bubble of air, have it hit the keel at high speed creating both explosive impact damage AND more importantly rapidly lift the hull in a very small point would snap their backs, rupture all sorts of things and possibly detonate their magazines.

[Eric in the Ozarks]

I saw the missile-updated Missouri a couple years ago while touring Pearl.
I don’t think they bothered to do this with the BB-61 after the turret explosion.

The sailing range of these BBs was limited by the switch from N6 to diesel after they were brought out under President Reagan.

[Bulwyf]

Haha, must of been a terror to contend with back in the day. I’d of liked to see footage of the Bismarck battle. Too bad they didn’t have all that on camera.

[PeterPrinciple]

Back in the 50s or 60s I’ve heard they used a bunch of these and other old large caliber barrels to dispose of high level radioactive waste.

---

That would be a factual statement:

During the 1950s, the Navy wanted to give these guns even bigger, scarier teeth and designed the W23 nuclear artillery shell for them. Only fifty of these 20-kiloton atomic bullets were made for the Iowa’s 16-inchers and they were in service until 1962, when they were quietly placed in storage and thought to have been destroyed by 2004.

[Hillarys Gate Cult]

I also thought that we packed the worn out barrels with explosives and dropped them out of cargo aircraft as a brutal penetrating MOABs.

[Axenolith]

Yes, I believe that was an expedient use in the second Gulf War.

[OKSooner]

I’ve seen that piece of Yamato armor numerous times. It wasn’t struck by 16” Superheavy AP fired from a 50 caliber Iowa class rifle, it was struck by a standard 16” AP fired from a 45 caliber Washington/South Dakota class rifle.

Could someone explain the nomenclature of the calibers used in these big naval guns, particularly the part about ".45 caliber", ".50 caliber", etc?

TIA.

[tanknetter]

Could someone explain the nomenclature of the calibers used in these big naval guns, particularly the part about ".45 caliber", ".50 caliber", etc?

Caliber is defined as rifle length divided by bore diameter. In the case of the Iowas their rifles were 50x the diameter of their 16" bore, or just about 67 feet long.

The preceding Washington and South Dakota classes' guns were 45x their 16" bore, or 60 feet long. The extra 6' in length made a big difference in both distance and accuracy.

I've been aboard the Wisconsin (Iowa class) and the North Carolina (Washington Class) and my own Mk.I Eyeball observations are that the 6' difference is really noticeable - the North Carolina's guns look ... stubby ... compared to the Wisconsin's.

[US_MilitaryRules]

Nope. In this video the camera men are standing on deck next to the guns firing. At the 3:28 mark in the video.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-5ATYPrZnSQ

[tanknetter]

Procedure aboard the Iowas was to roll the bridge windows down prior to firing, since the human bodies on the bridge could absorb the concussive force better than the windows could.

When Reagan rode the Iowa up the Hudson during the 1985 parade of ships for the Statue of Liberty restoration, there was an idea to fire the 16”ers in salute (sans shells). The idea was dropped when the Navy calculated that a massive number of windows in Lower Manhattan would shatter.

And during the NJ’s Vietnam tour a photog was put out on the bow to photograph the guns firing. He was told to open his mouth and put his finger on the button ... That his finger would instinctively depress the button when they fired.

[Jeff Head]

For naval rifles/guns, the inches is the inside diameter of the barrel. The caliber is the length of the barrel, so 50 caliber is 50 X the diameter. So, a US Navy 16”/50 gun means that the gun has a bore 16 inches in diameter, and a barrel length of 16 x 50 inches = 800 inches long.

This is different from the rifle you carry to hunt with, where a .30 caliber rifle means 3/10ths of an inch inside diameter, and a .50 caliber means a half inch inside diameter.

[Jeff Head]

Important to also note that the Yamato (sunk in April 1945 during its Kamikazi mission against US forces at Okinawa) and the Musachi (sunk in October 1944 during the Battle of the Sibuyan Sea during the overall Battle of Leyte Gulf) were never his by US Navy battleship rifle fire during the war.

They were both sunk by US Naval aviation.

There was a third, the Shinano, which was converted to a carrier while building in 1942 that was sunk in November 1944 by a US submarine on its maiden voyage.

A fourth, which was never named, was only 30% complete when it as canceled well before the end of the war, and broken up in place by the Japanese during the war.

The armor pictured in that photo above is a piece of 26” turret armor off of one of the Yamato class that the USN salvaged later for testing purposes

[Jeff Head]

Just a little more historical info about the Yamato class and their fate.

Yamato blows up after severe punshiment by US Naval aircraft on April 7, 1945:

Musashi being hammered on Otober 24, 1944 by US Naval aircraft:

The converted Yamato class battleship, the Shinano (which was the largest carrier ever built until the US Navy first super carrier (the Frrestal) displacing 70,000 tons), underway during her sea trials. She would be sunk on November 28, 1944 on her initial cruise after being commissioned.

The Shanino took four torpedos and that was enough to sink her, which was a relatively light number of hits when compared to what it took to sink the other Yamato class ships. It was later determined that she had serious flaws in the welding for her watertight integrity, which probably ccurred during her conversion to accunt for her sinking.

By comparison, the other two full battleships took an unbelievable amount of pounding to put them down.

The Musashi, on October 24, 1944, while crossing the Sibuyan Sea during the overasll Battle of Leyte Gulf, with ther sister ship Yamato, other battleships, numerous crusers and many destroyers, was attacked by US Naval aircraft.

She was attacked four different times between 10:30 AM and 2:00 PM. First by eight Gruman TBF Avenger Torpedo bombers. Then, and hour and a half later, by eight Helldiver dive bombers. Then, nine more Avenger Torpdo bombers attacked. Finally, twenty-nine more aircraft (Helldivers, Avengers, and Hellcats) attacked. All in all, she was attacked by 54 aircraft. She was hit by 19 torpedos and 17 bombs (13 bombs and 11 torpedos in the last large attack). Most all of the bombs were 500 lb bombs.

After first being hit at 10:30 AM, and all hits having registered by 2 PM, she still took anther 7 1/2 hours to sink, going down at 19:36 on October 24, 1944. Over 1,020 of her crew was lost.

The Yamato, on April , 1945, after being ordered to attack the large US Navl forces massed at Okinawa, and having been given enough fuel for only the one way trip...in other words on the largest Kamikazi mission of the war...was located and attacked by US Naval aircaft.

At 12:30 in the afternoon, US naval aircrat arrived and attacked the Japanese formation. Another group joined in at 13:00 PM and a third group came in at 13:40 PM> All in all, over 280 aircraft attacked the Yamato and her escorts. She was totally overwhelmed. She was hit by a confirmed 11 torpedos and 6 bombs, though it was reported that the total number was 13 torpedos and 8 bombs. Either way, it was enough. At 14:22, as she was settling and rolling over, her main magazine exploded, obliterating her (as shown above). Over 3,050 of her crew was killed in the attack.

All in all, the Japanese lost almost 4,100 sailors with the loss of these two battleships. They were the largest and most heavily armored battleships ever built. But they were n match for US Naval air power...partiularly when they had no air cover themselves. Their day was over.

[tanknetter]

Shinano also wasn’t fully crewed, still had a lot of yardworkers aboard and probably wasn’t at full watertight integrity when Archerfish’s torpedos hit.

[MeganC]

WOW!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!