USS NEW JERSEY FIRES 16 INCHERS OFF CAPE HENLOPEN
CAPE HENLOPEN FIRING RANGE 1968
Aboard The USS New Jersey at Sea: April 1968
The Battleship USS New Jersey cruised in the Atlantic yesterday toward the end of four days of sea trials and testing of her 16-inch guns at the Cape Henlopen Firing Range. Today all nine of her 16 inchers will be fired for the first time since she was put in mothballs over ten years ago. Each gun will be fired once. Then each of the three gun turrets will fire a salvo. Eighteen projectiles to be fired are all that are aboard for the trials.
It was because of the big guns that the USS New Jersey was taken out of the reserve fleet at Philadelphia Naval Shipyard and reactivated at a cost of $20 million.
By the end of September, she is to be off the coast of Viet Nam pounding enemy positions from miles at sea.
Yesterday the USS New Jersey had cruised 130 miles to NE of Norfolk for a series of high-speed test which was postponed because of boiler problems, and she headed back to a point 50 miles off Cape Henlopen. The huge battlewagon, as long as three football fields, had left Philadelphia Naval Base last Monday and will leave for the west coast in May, then on to Vietnam.
Abstract: Wednesday, 17 April 1968, The Central New Jersey Home News, New Brunswick, New Jersey.
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I’m Harrison and this is a blog about ‘local’ history. I research topics through many means but mostly I find local newspaper articles from newspaperabstracts.com. Sometimes they are relative to something that is happening now. Sometimes it is just interesting and worth sharing.
