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Thursday, March 21, 2024, shortly after noon, the Battleship New Jersey began traveling down the Delaware River. The ship arrived at Paulsboro Marine Terminal in Paulsboro, New Jersey, just before 4 p.m. for hull preparation. A week later, the historic ship will head to the Philadelphia Navy Yard for historic dry dock maintenance. "This battleship is just a tremendous piece of history," Battleship New Jersey CEO Marshall Spevak said. “This is a once in a generation opportunity really to see the ship move.” When did Battleship NJ depart? The ship left from Camden on March 21 around high tide --...

CAMDEN, N.J. -- Residents in the Philadelphia area are about to see a rare site — a battleship floating down the Delaware River. The USS New Jersey is scheduled to move from its dock in Camden on Thursday, when it will head to the Philadelphia Navy Yard for extensive maintenance work. The vessel, guided by tugboats, will initially head to the Paulsboro Marine Terminal, where it will be balanced to prepare for dry docking, and will then go to the Navy Yard six days later. The maintenance work is expected to take about two months to complete, officials said. Three...

[Video] Schab has returned for the 82nd commemoration of the Pearl Harbor attack. HONOLULU (HawaiiNewsNow) - Pearl Harbor survivor “Ike” Schab is back in Honolulu. The 103-year-old was greeted with applause Sunday as he got off his flight from Portland. Schab has returned for the 82nd commemoration of the Pearl Harbor attack. It’s a trip that almost didn’t happen because of an illness, but Schab was determined to make it to this year’s ceremony. While it’s been more than eight decades since the Pearl Harbor attack, Dec. 7 still brings back his memories of being there. ”And they’re not necessarily...

While in service, the USS Texas sailed through some of the globe’s most treacherous waters. The Texas is one of only eight ships to serve in both world wars. Its crew supported American troops on D-Day and on Iwo Jima. After being decommissioned, the Texas became a floating museum, docked beside the old San Jacinto Battleground near Houston. On Wednesday, the Texas will once again set out into open waters when a group of tugboats tows it to a dry dock in Galveston, where the ship will undergo extensive repairs on its hull as part of a long-term plan to...

Plans for former President Donald Trump to return July 4th weekend to the city many credited with lending legitimacy to his 2016 campaign after USS Alabama Battleship Memorial Park commissioners reportedly did not sign off on a plan for Trump to hold a rally at the Mobile site. The commissioners were concerned that Trump’s appearance on Saturday “was going to be a partisan political event, rather than just a patriotic event planned for that evening,” Bill Tunnell, chairman of the commission, told NBC 15. Efforts to reach Tunnell were not successful. The commissioner told the station the body asked Attorney...

Roma was the third Littorio-class battleship, and by all accounts, she was graceful in appearance – a testament to Italian designs – unlike the blocky designs of British or German battleships. She was well-armored, fast-moving, and quite capably armed. Built with a compartmented hull and an ingenious system of bulkheads and expansion cylinders the Roma was in theory as fortified as her namesake – where Rome’s mighty walls fended off attackers for centuries.

Also known as the Super Yamato-class, the Design A-150 battleship began in late 1938 and it was to be armed with at least six 510mm (20-inch) guns as well as dozens of smaller caliber weapons. The warship as it was originally envisioned was also 91,000 metric tons (90,000 long tons) and yet would be fast enough to maintain a speed of 30 knots – faster than the American Navy’s North Carolina-class battleships, which could maintain a speed of 27 knots.

In May 1941, the new German battleship Bismarck was a huge, state-of-the-art warship, equipped with the latest long-range heavy cannon, new stereoscopic range-finders that promised unprecedented accuracy, new ship-based radar, and an intricate system of armor-plating and honey-combed water-tight compartments that rendered her virtually unsinkable. If Bismarck broke out into the vast, indefensible shipping lanes of the North Atlantic, it could wreak catastrophic havoc with the war-sustaining convoys coming across the ocean [from the U.S.] In 1941 England, it was believed that this single weapon might determine the very course of the war in Europe. Where the entire Luftwaffe had...

In this decisive action WASHINGTON and SOUTH DAKOTA engaged a Japanese force termed around the battleship KIRISHIMA. SOUTH DAKOTA suffered extensive topside damage, but WASHINGTON's accurate fire mortally injured KIRISHIMA. Set aflame and racked by explosions, KIRISHIMA was scuttled by her crew. The last major Japanese naval thrust at Guadalcanal had been turned back, and WASHINGTON had done what she had been designed to do -- sink one of her own kind in a gunnery action. WASHINGTON was the only American fast battleship to defeat another capital ship. WASHINGTON ACTION REPORT On the night of November 14-15 WASHINGTON was flagship...

On February 15, 1898, the battleship USS Maine exploded in Havana Harbor, touching off the Spanish-American War shortly thereafter. Here is an account written by Charles D. Sigsbee, the captain of the Maine who survived the destruction of his ship and later went on to become an Admiral in the United States Navy. About an hour before the explosion I had completed a report called for by Mr. Theodore Roosevelt, Assistant Secretary of the Navy, on the advisability of continuing to place torpedo-tubes on board cruisers and battleships. I then wrote a letter home, in which I struggled to apologize...

Film footage documenting life on a Colorado class battleship circa 1925. (B&W silent appx 9 minutes)

HONOLULU — Damage to the USS Arizona Memorial at Pearl Harbor in Honolulu was worse than expected and it will remain closed indefinitely, officials said. Boat transportation to the attraction was suspended May 6 after one of the vessel operators noticed a crack on the outside of the memorial, Hawaii News Now reported . Tourists were allowed to disembark at the memorial after crews completed interim repairs. But the cracks reappeared hours later, indicating a more serious issue.

Is the Church a Cruise Ship or a Battleship? Msgr. Charles Pope • May 17, 2018 • Some years ago, Fr. Patrick Smith, a friend of mine and a priest of this archdiocese, preached a sermon in which he asked if the Church was a clubhouse or a lighthouse.It seems that many people want the Church just to be a friendly place where people can gather. Many of these same people get angry when the Church shines the light of truth on something. They declare that the Church should just be open and inviting. They object when She is...

In World War II, the Japanese super-battleships Yamato and Musahi each mounted nine 18.1-inch guns, the largest naval guns ever deployed, but they never sank a single American ship. In a conflict decided by naval aviation, Yamato and Musahi were used mainly as flagships and troop transports. Despite their huge armaments, they were steel dinosaurs from an earlier strategic age. But how do you sink a steel dinosaur? The answer is: "with difficulty." It took eleven torpedoes and six bombs to sink the Yamato. The Musahi took nineteen torpedoes and seventeen bombs. And at the time they were sunk, both...

Commodore Henry Harwood's Force G, consisting of the heavy cruiser HMS Exeter, and the light cruisers HMS Ajax and HMNZS Achilles engage the German panzerschiff Admiral Graf Spee off the coast of Uruguay. In the two hour running gun fight, Exeter is heavily damaged, Ajax and Achilles are also damaged. Graf Spee's fuel oil purification plant and evaporators are knocked out, as is the crews galley facility. Spee heads for the harbor in neutral Montevideo. Repairs will take two weeks, but by rules of the Hague convention she can remain in port for 72 hours before being interned by the...

It was more than 70 years ago, in the closing months of the war in Europe, that Princess Elizabeth launched her first warship at the age of 18. Then it was the mighty battleship Vanguard, the last of its kind to serve in the Royal Navy. And yesterday, aged 91, the Queen commissioned Britain’s biggest ever warship, the HMS Queen Elizabeth, into the Royal Navy. In a moving speech to the crew while stood in the hangar of the 65,000 ton aircraft carrier at Portsmouth naval base, she said it embodied the ‘best of British’. The Queen said: ‘The most...

The three new Zumwalt-class destroyers are in trouble. Originally envisioned as a fleet of more nearly three dozen destroyers, and the weapons that justified them, the Zumwalts have faced delays, cuts and staggering cost increases. As the ships teeter on the verge of white elephant status, could they become relevant again by taking on a new role, that of a stealthy ship killer? The Zumwalt-class destroyers were originally envisioned as a fleet of thirty-two destroyers designed to attack targets far inland with precision-guided howitzer shells. Designed in part to support amphibious landings by the U.S. Marine Corps, the Zumwalts were...

This is good to see President Trump honoring these men. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zd-S-AkfZrQ  

The Chinese navy is taking arsenal ships in a new direction—as giant submersibles. Post-Cold War naval theorists have long dreamed of recreating the old battleships' power through massive "arsenal ships," or warships carrying hundreds of guided missiles that could fire at land and sea targets. Now it looks like China wants to make that dream a reality.

Photo Illustration by Elena Scotti/Jalopnik/GMG President Donald Trump seems to like big, “bold” ideas. Throw nukes around? Sure. Rip up the deck of an aircraft carrier to install the “goddamned steam?” Okay, fine. But what if we brought back one of the biggest military statements America has ever had—what if we brought back the battleship? It’s not that the current American capital ship, the aircraft carrier, is obsolete. But the the Gerald R. Ford-class of aircraft carriers are remarkably, enormously expensive, and potentially vulnerable to many kinds of attack. Many of the Navy’s other surface ships exist essentially in order...