USS New Jersey

Beautiful. Old Glory and signal flags a-flying. Enough to bring this old retired Navy guy to tears. "E" for excellence. A lifetime experience Ken and I'm happy that you got to witness it.

It was back in the early 1980's that the Iowa Class Battleships - New Jersey, Missouri, Wisconsin, Iowa I believe, were tasked by Long Beach Naval Shipyard to bring them out of storage and convert them to missile launch platforms - cruise missiles.

Shipyard made a fatal planning error by opting for this prestigious retrofit instead of the DDG guided missile destroyers work offered by the Navy, which would have continued the shipyard's gainful long term employment and the civilian yards do the 4 battleships.

There were many, many more DDG's that always needed constant work. (Ships are like old cars, always need replacing & overhauling worn equipment, "body repairs", upgrading various systems to stay current.)

Once the 4 battleships were done, shipyard had to beg/borrow work from other yards, victim of BRAC 1995, now closed and properties returned to rightful owners prior to imminent domain action leading into WW2. It, the Supply Center and Naval Station are all now past history.

As part of returning from being "mothballed", changes included boiler fuel change from Bunker C (cheapest fuel - tar-like, the dregs of the refining process after the better stuff was distilled off) to more universal better grade Navy distillate fuel used by all their ships.

Floating fuel pickup where emptying fuel tanks would be filled with sea water, to keep ship's draft in the water the same, so the enemy could not visibly determine whether ship needed refueling (by it "riding high").

They removed one of the 16 inch gun turrets on back to make room for the missile system.

Reagan's military budget pulled our nation out of a recession and got our economy in motion again.

Being a member of the Long Beach Servicemen's Center, we had sailor friends from the New Jersey and Missouri stationed for a time at Long Beach Naval Station.

Walking up to and boarding those ships were a sight to see, very impressive.