battleships

the gigantic guns can hurl deadly

projectiles the weight of an automobile

against targets more than 20 miles away

they are still among the fastest largest

and most powerful warships ever to sail

the world's oceans

deep inside the armored hull men program

critical data into a sophisticated

central nervous system its origins date

to the last century at their command the

guns fire with fearful accuracy

for 100 years proud symbols of the

world's mightiest nations great fighting

machines that had no equal

home to that special breed of fighting

man

the battleship sailor

[Applause]

Victor's and victims in the war at sea

on their decks have unfolded many a

turning point in the history of the 20th

century

the Battleship long thought unsinkable

indestructible until the morning of

December 7 1941 when at Pearl Harbor her

mastery of the sea seemed over eclipsed

by the terrible power and accuracy of

carrier-based aircraft yet she reappears

in Korea from Vietnam and 50 years after

the premature report of her death of

Pearl Harbor her weapons echo across the

waters of the Persian Gulf

once again a battleship is back

this is her story

[Music]

the 2nd of august 1990

Iraq's invasion of Kuwait has been met

with a swift response a coalition of

Western and Arab nations has created a

massive buildup of armament in Saudi

Arabia President George Bush issues a

final ultimatum to the Iraqi president

withdraw from Kuwait or face

overwhelming force as 1991 begins the

United States as the final weapons to

the coalition's arsenal two of America's

aging battleships will answer the call

for months the USS Missouri has been

making preparations for her third war

her firepower has been modernized as she

prepares to join her sister the

battleship Wisconsin already in the Gulf

[Music]

16 January Iraq ignores the coalition's

ultimatum

17 January 1:40 a.m. the crew of the

Missouri is at General Quarters

[Music]
[Music]

Missouri captain Lee case the Tomahawks

of course were the first ones launched

in the war and this was the first time

that the battleship Missouri entered the

modern age with modern weapons we had

never had the opportunity to fire those

before and every one of them worked as

advertised and the Missouri's basic

armament her fifty-year-old 16-inch guns

were fired in anger for the first time

since the Korean War

the target with the port city of Khafji

Saudi Arabia to get within range the

Missouri moved into the shallows there

were only three feet of water beneath

her keel leaked tapes

well when the big guns were fired in

anger for the first time during the Gulf

War a chair could be heard from one end

of the ship to the other we could hear

over the sound powered phones the

excitement of all the people in the

plotting rooms the turret that got to

fire the first round I think wasn't

probably the big heroes of the day at

that particular time but one of the

Missouri's most effective new weapons

never fired a shot

the RPV's or remotely piloted vehicles

were the Missouri's own spotters like

the battleship float planes of old the

miniature aircraft featured two camera

systems one for DES the other infrared

for night viewing when they could be

most effective

the RPV's were 14 feet long their wing

spans 17 feet they're computerized

controls were operated by a pilot inside

the battleships superstructure

[Music]

rocket launch to an altitude of 200 feet

in less than two seconds the plane's two

cycle engine then took over over the

enemy target the RPV sends pictures and

coordinates back to the ship

the pictures are fed into the closed

circuit TV system an Iraqi food truck

stops at a series of bunkers along a

road it is spotted by the cameras of the

unheard RPV 1500 feet above the

positions are fed into the Missouri's

computer and when the big guns fire they

are precisely on target

proof positive that the 50 year old big

guns can still do their work

[Music]

[Music]

Perley case the RPV was the perfect

airborne spotter so there was a perfect

blend of the old and new onboard bazzara

in the Gulf War and both the old and the

new contributed to our success the USS

Missouri fights on America's most

historic battleship the newest

technology now drafted to her aging body

like her battleship sisters she was born

to another time another place

[Music]

far from the Persian Gulf off the

Hawaiian island of Oahu

is the watery graveyard of another great

battleship

[Music]

the remains of some 900 American sailors

and Marines still lie within her twisted

wreck the battleship Arizona rests

quietly below the peaceful waters of

Pearl Harbor oil still escapes from her

tanks this was once a living ship

forever doomed on the morning of

December 7 1941

[Music]

dick Fisk was the bugler on the USS West

Virginia I found it first call around

five minutes to eight four colors we

were looking towards the Arizona then

towards a to Mountain there then we saw

a group of airplanes coming in and we

thought that they were ours Dan Martinez

is an historian at the Arizona Memorial

on the morning of December 7 1941 his

grandfather was finishing his night

shift he was walking to his car when the

first torpedo planes roared right

overhead about 150 feet in altitude at

first he thought it was just a mock

battle or grill it was no drill at 7:55

that Sunday morning the clock began to

tick away the final minutes of the

battleship era the great warships were

all there awaiting at Rose inspection

[Music]

for the skilled Japanese pilots who had

long practice for the secret mission the

American battleships Lord so tightly in

a row where a textbook target to which

they brought new and terrible weapons of

war

the development of a shallow-water

torpedo was essential to the success of

the attack the Japanese knew that Pearl

Harbor was only 45 feet deep American

commanders felt secure in Pearl Harbor

they were sure torpedoes required a

depth of 100 feet before they could be

effective but they were wrong we just

took torpedo after torpedo and come to

find out we we had actually nine

torpedoes in us heat bully destructive

was the armor-piercing bomb dropped from

an altitude of 10,000 feet

the point of this bomb with its

delayed-action fuse who's meant to

penetrate inside the ship then explode

we were looking towards the Arizona when

this this it's whistle come by sounded

like a freight train and it landed just

forward of the number one gun turret

I thought that they the battleship was

most invincible nothing can hurt it

sixteen inches of armor plating ain't

nothing going to go through that

the Arizona founder to 9 minutes and

burn for two and a half days

[Music]

1177 men lost their lives on the

battleship Arizona that morning

with the death of the Arizona it seemed

died the battleship itself for half a

century the universal symbol of naval

pride and power

the Americans were stunned by the daring

of the Japanese I think there was an

arrogance on the part of America to

understand that the Japanese were

capable of these things mostly when you

read newspapers or magazines of the

period got the impression that the

Japanese were inferior Japanese planning

was anything but inferior they had set a

secret route across the treacherous

Northern Pacific and had sent the liner

tiger Maru in advance to be certain no

one sailed up there in a bold effort

they raced toward Pearl Harbor knowing

that they could succeed I thought we had

the most powerful Navy in the world

what happened

the sonken arizona was thought by many

to symbolize the end of an era

[Music]

today there are no battleships on

battleship row

only the symbols and memories of those

once great warships and of the war

itself linger on

the Japanese have been planning their

attack for over a year their war plan

had been secretly but actively in

operation since the fall of 1941 it

included the conquest of Guam Wake

Island Hong Kong the Philippines and

Malaya

it began with their surprise attack on

the Americans on December 8th just one

day after the fateful and tragic attack

at Pearl Harbor at the British Admiralty

in London the leadership of the Royal

Navy met to debate the future deployment

of its two warships

Prince of Wales and repulse winston

churchill's personal choice to protect

the far-flung reaches of the British

Empire it was the Prince of Wales that

just four months earlier carried

Churchill across the Atlantic for his

historic face-to-face meeting with the

American president

[Music]

symbolically under the guns of the

British battleship they had signed the

Atlantic Charter

[Music]

now in the Pacific the Prince of Wales

and repulse are the lone symbols of

Britain's resolved the question should

these two nah be rush to Pearl Harbor

the debate continues throughout December

9 at day's end they adjourn the decision

will be taken tomorrow December 10 1941

[Music]

but off the coast of Malaya it already

is tomorrow as Admiralty officials sleep

in London repulse and Prince of Wales

searched the sea for a Japanese landing

force and are spotted from the air as at

Pearl Harbor 48 hours earlier

the combination of high-level bombers

and low-flying torpedo planes is

devastating

it would be the first time that aircraft

will sink a battleship underway at sea

840 British seamen lose their lives when

the Prince of Wales and repulse are both

son those who had been debating the

future of the two battleships awake to

hear the terrible news British naval

historian Eric Grove the Prince of Wales

and repulse was very much Churchill's

own miscalculation he thought at a small

fast squadron of capital ships based in

Singapore would act as a very potent

deterrent to a country that he thought

of as effectively a bunch of rather

crude yellow men who hadn't really

grasped Western technology nothing could

have been further from the truth the

loss of the Prince of Wales in the

repulse was a tremendous blow to British

prestige self-image not just Britain

itself the entire Empire

[Music]

reeling from the attack on Pearl Harbor

and virtually alone in the Pacific the

United States strikes back

/ to Pearl Harbor based aircraft

carriers were at sea during the attack

on December 7 by the spring of 1942 they

had ravaged the Japanese fleet in the

battles of the Coral Sea and Midway

at Midway alone the Japanese lost four

carriers and over 300 planes

Pearl Harbor had been avenged

in just six months the tide of war had

changed dramatically

on July 11 a battleship appears outside

Pearl Harbor

she is the USS North Carolina the first

American battleship to be commissioned

in eighteen years the largest most

modern of all American warships it has

taken nearly eight years to design and

build her

the North Carolina would soon be in the

thick of battle

but on this day the majority of her crew

lined the decks to see the damage kept

secret for seven months

Larry resin was a 17-year old seaman

aboard the North Carolina I looked out

and I saw these ships with their broken

backs

I saw the Arizona still tilted over the

USS Oklahoma battleship just the bottom

showing oil all over the place all of a

sudden there was this chair from the men

on the ships from the shore and I said

to myself we haven't done a thing a damn

thing and they're cheering us

ken dues was at Pearl Harbor when the

North Carolina came down the channel

what I saw there that day was the most

magnificent man of war that any of us

had ever seen this ship meant that we

had people ships and ammunition

coming out of the states that were going

to be there in short order and they were

gonna help us survive

the North Carolina would fight in every

major campaign from Guadalcanal to the

bombardment of Japan she first saw

action on 24 August 1942 while

protecting the carrier enterprise

[Music]

[Music]

her performance was remarkable since at

the time she had none of the 40

millimeter anti-aircraft guns with which

she would later be equipped

at one point six dive-bombers were

driven off by her primitive

20-millimeter deck guns and by day's end

she had shot down seven planes and

assisted with seven more

as the war progressed the north

carolina's bristled with anti-aircraft

guns in her lifetime the north

carolina's gun served her well she

earned battle stars for 15 campaigns

nine times she shelled enemy positions

ashore she sank a troop ship destroyed

at least 24 aircraft and defended

American carriers against scores of

attacks

in 1942 the North Carolina was a symbol

of America's new strength in the Pacific

she would soon be joined by six of the

eight battleships the Japanese thought

they had destroyed at Pearl Harbor at

Guadalcanal the carrier's enterprise

Saratoga and wasp

were joined by the North Carolina

Washington and South Dakota

Roosevelt's Lonard served aboard the

North Carolina

August 7th 8th and 9th 1942 then North

Carolina was a part of a task force that

was invaded Guadalcanal

we began before daybreak and we fired

several hours after we we bombarded the

island a while then the planes came in

for bombarding we backed out the

American carrier based aircraft made

certain that the Japanese would not

reinforce their positions on the island

so our role was to protect the carrier

from any other carrier planes and other

ships that were in the area and the

magazine was to get power and shells up

to the gun

we were sealed in we were three or four

decks down in this magazine we work hard

when it was a an tank because the 5-inch

guns are the shooting Bam Bam Bam real

fast and we've just had to get the part

of that to them the men shut up in the

North Carolina and in other battleships

during an air attack could track the

Japanese planes coming closer and closer

by listening to the guns first the five

years

forty millimeters finally the

deck-mounted twenty millimeter

is the plains that survive

fall 1942 the battle for Guadalcanal

wears on the Japanese send one of the

most powerful battleships the kurushima

de bombard the American air base at

Henderson Field on the nights of 14 and

15 November between Tsavo Island and

Guadalcanal the battleships Washington

and South Dakota engage in a gun fuel at

point-blank range with the Japanese

force

the South Dakota is severely damaged and

the four American destroyers

accompanying the two battleships are

disabled in 20 minutes the destroyer

Preston took several direct hits before

she sank her combat cameraman Robert

Reid was thrown into the water for

nearly three hours

he watched the action it was a duel

between the Washington and the fish the

Karishma was out guns were 14 inches

could not penetrate the Washington's

steel armored belt to 16 inches of the

Washington did penetrate to 14 inch

Belton

expelled her dude she apparently burned

and exploded until she finally went down

according to the battle reports around 3

a.m.

3:30

throughout 1943 the Allied offensive

grows ever stronger American technology

and training overwhelmed the enemy

[Music]

in the fall the allies begin the Central

Pacific campaign a march through the

Japanese held eight halls north of the

Equator only 750 miles from the enemy

homeland part of the American effort

will rest with a new class of

battleships the iowa-class the Americans

had long been wary of Japanese plans in

the Pacific when four years before Pearl

Harbor Japan began to build three large

battleships the United States increased

the size of its battleships to 45,000

tons their guns to 16 inches

[Music]

result is a new class in battleship

named for the first of their kind the

USS Iowa

[Music]

[Applause]

more than five years in design and

construction the Iowa and the Missouri

would be built in the New York Navy Yard

the New Jersey in Wisconsin in

Philadelphia up to ten thousand people

had a hand in the construction of each

ship the Missouri alone required three

million man days of work

in recognition of the threat from enemy

aircraft the four iowa-class ships had

been designed with an emphasis on the

protection of their turrets machinery

and magazines against aerial bombs the

heaviest armor was more than six inches

thick
- huge belts along the sides were angled

inboard to provide protection equal to

13.5 inches of steel the plates that

were locked together to make up the

belts weighed 50 tons each the huge

crane was at its limit as it positioned

them to be welded in place because all

of the Iowas entered service late in the

war each was equipped with the newest

technology including surface and air

search radar that could track enemy

aircraft 100 miles away

each of the three turrets on an Iowa

class ship contained three of the newest

16-inch guns the most powerful guns ever

mounted on a u.s. warship with its

improved range an armor-piercing shell

from one of the new 16-inch guns were

said to be capable of penetrating 32

feet of reinforced concrete

the iOS had the greatest anti-aircraft

capability of any ship in World War two

their secondary armament included 25

inch guns and 10 twin mounts and 130

smaller anti-aircraft guns they were

fast and they could cruise great

distances without refueling the top

speed was 33 knots the fastest

battleships in the world and their range

at 12 knots was an incredible 18,000

miles

the new battleships were run by crews of

over 2,000 men

the iowa-class battleships would see

action in the Pacific in the closing

months of World War two

by 1944 in the Philippine Sea the fast

carriers fighter planes supported by the

battleships anti-aircraft fire we're

destroying the heart of Japanese naval

aviation now the Americans begin to feel

the extent of Japan's desperation naval

historian Paul Stilwell in the autumn of

1944 as the Americans got into the

Philippines the Japanese were so

desperate in their defensive stance that

they inaugurated the Corps of kamikazes

planes flown by men who were in effect

human fire control systems for the bombs

they carried they were deliberately

willing to sacrifice their lives because

of the code of the warrior that said

dying for the Emperor was the highest

honor the kamikazes primary targets are

the wooden decks of the American

aircraft carriers

on 24 October a force of 259

carrier-based American bombers and

torpedo planes attacked four of Japan's

largest battleships in the sea buoyancy

the American pilots concentrate on

Musashi

as she falls behind the others after

nine hours of unrelenting punishment the

great Japanese man of war ravaged by 20

torpedoes and ten bombs rolls over and

six oil and debris from the Musashi

still float on the water the next day

when a Japanese fleet of four destroyers

a cruiser and two battleships steamed

through a narrow strait called Surikov

the Japanese are unaware that at the

north end of the straight the Americans

have assembled eight cruisers 26

destroyers and six battleships it is a

textbook trap

Edie Snyder was that sir a guy low

strength we had very good intelligence

which indicated to us which way that

forces had to come this force the

Japanese forces carrying the amphibious

attack led by some battleships to come

up through a strait a very narrow strait

so narrow that the battleships could not

turn they have to stay within the

channel as gunnery officer was tracking

the Japanese lead battleship went

through the optics of the rangefinder

which in effect was a sight I had it in

the crosshairs and it suddenly occurred

to me that this that the pagoda-like

mast of this Japanese ship was

absolutely filling the the Arctic said

we were that close and as I recall

thinking my god that looks just like the

pagoda mast of a Japanese battleship

that I learned about in recognition

class back at the Naval Academy and then

uh well that's exactly what it is and

and it's shooting back at us it was that

Sarah GAO's straight that battleships

last used the classic formation of

crossing the T it was a geographical

decision not just so much as a tactical

decision because the Japanese had to

come up through the narrow state

crossing the T is a maneuver invented

over a century and a half ago by coming

across the enemy's bow battleships could

fire broadsides while the enemy could

only fire their forward guns mr. Ogawa

straight the Americans crossed the T on

the Japanese we saw these tracers going

through the sky and they were coming

from our back

converging on the Japanese battleships

the battleships that we had backing us

up the Maryland the California the West

Virginia the Pennsylvania the

Mississippi and the Tennessee what

poetic justice that these ships that

were sunk

at Pearl Harbor are gonna go into action

against Japanese battleships Admiral

Yamamoto was wrong to think that he

could destroy the American resolve he

was right when he said I fear we have

awakened a sleeping giant we must

remember that sir a guy whose fate was

the last major surface action between

battleships it's probably the last

surface action between any kinds of

ships that did not involve aircraft that

night the American battleships assisted

I like to think by the attacks of the

destroyers really annihilated the the

Japanese battleship force

four months after the Battle of Surigao

Strait America's great battleships are

fold upon once again this time the

assignment is the shelling of the

japanese-held island of Iwo Jima one of

the eight older battleships is the West

Virginia back from the grave of Pearl

Harbor

her bugler dick Fisk had been

transferred to the fifth Marine Division

and had gone ashore as an assistant

platoon leader the thinkin was fired

their shells into Mount Suribachi it was

exhilarating because he said boy now we

got some firepower behind us we're not

alone out here they're gonna wipe this

place out

Larry resin was aboard the North

Carolina they fired the main battery

that's the 16-inch guns where the

projectiles are about as tall as I am if

they fire nine of them at once two

things happen once the recoil actually

slide the ship sideways in the water

that's a lot of movement but the other

thing especially in my battle station

you get a sucking out of the air and

your lungs I mean the vacuum created by

the projectiles taking off creates a

vacuum

in March of 1945 only the island of

Okinawa stood between the Allies and the

Japanese mainland in Okinawa was

fiercely defended for the Americans for

the Japanese the battle for Okinawa

would be the most costly action from the

Pacific 75,000 Japanese

13,000 Americans and 150,000 Okinawan

civilians would be lost

Americans battleships were there to

prepare the way the North Carolina and

the other three ships of the iowa-class

Missouri Wisconsin and New Jersey joined

the older but still highly accurate New

Mexico and Tennessee the Allied landings

began on Easter Sunday 1 April 1945 they

were accompanied by massive bombardment

from the battle

[Music]

the defense of Okinawa the Japanese

unleashed operation Tengo the largest

most concentrated kamikaze campaign yet

[Music]

as I'm looking through these binoculars

which are huge binoculars called the

eyes on the signal bridge and I'm

looking at this plane coming down as I

see the shells coming out forward all

around and then all of a sudden I look

in the side of the cockpit and I see the

pilot I see his fixed eyes and then all

of a sudden the wings come off the

explosions occur the engine have enough

that catches on fire and the pilot with

blood running down his face leans over

in slumps meaning he's dead that the

plane still keeps coming like a

ballistic missile straight at you

straight down very fortunately it missed

us by about a hundred yards operation

Tengo was truly a massive suicide

campaign the Americans have never seen

anything like it

thousands of young pilots eager to die

as human bombs believing they were part

of a divine width

thousands of chemical planes were shot

out of the sky by carrier-based fighters

and anti-aircraft fire from the

battleships

still there were others that found their

mark

33 American ships and 5,000 men were

lost to kamikaze attacks during

Operation tango

but perhaps the greatest kamikaze

mission of all time involved not

aircraft but a battleship the largest

most fearsome battleship ever built

for years before the attack on Pearl

Harbor the design for a new and massive

battleship was secretly being tank

tested in Japan's core a shipyard she

would be called Yamato the oldest and

most sacred name with which the Japanese

referred to their island nation and she

would be the largest most powerful

battleship ever built

a huge roof covered the behemoth when

trains move past the construction

attendance drew the curtains to cut off

the view under a shroud of secrecy the

great ship took shape

nearly 23,000 tons of her total weight

was in her armor a record that has never

been able her largest guns were over 18

inches in diameter and 1 single turret

weighed more than a heavy destroyer she

carried 12 6 inch and 12 5-inch guns in

her secondary battery and bristled with

150 225 millimeter anti-aircraft guns

her watertight compartments and hundreds

of design innovations made her the most

glorious symbol of Japanese naval

supremacy but it would all be in vain 6

April 1945 the battleship yamato and

nine support vessels steamed out of the

port of Koray into the East China Sea

she's completely armed but carries only

enough fuel for a one-way trip to

Okinawa ceremonial sake and prayers are

offered to the 2,500 man crew for this

is to be the ultimate kamikaze mission

Yamato is to be sacrificed as the

Imperial Navy's face-saving

in the final battle of the war

this most powerful battleship of all

time is to be run aground her great guns

used as field artillery at sea the

Americans are waiting the suicide task

force is spotted by a single Drummond

Hellcat about 240 miles from his base

aboard the carrier Essex the first wave

of planes is ordered into the air there

are nine American carriers in position

the battleship yamato

will feel the full fury of their bombs

and torpedoes

Helldivers Avengers Hellcats over 400 of

them even more planes than the Japanese

had unleashed at Pearl Harbor yamato

went down with 20 498 japanese officers

and men the only record of her final

moments are these primitive combat

photographs

[Music]

but one can imagine such horror by

recalling the death of another

invincible battleship hms Baro

when a motion picture camera

[Music]

the mushroom cloud from the Yamato was

said to rise so high in the air that it

was visible from the Japanese mainland

50 miles away

Yamato had become the symbolic funeral

pyre of the Empire of Japan

for 50 years the battleship had been the

world's ultimate weapon national policy

represented by the threat of her

powerful gun

the road to two world wars began with

his creation of the first modern

battleship

[Music]

work began in 1905 on an entirely new

generation of battleships called Gretna

[Music]

HMS dreadnought would be the heaviest

fastest warship afloat her firepower was

concentrated in ten 12-inch guns to

protect her magazine she was wrapped

with armor plate 11 inches thick below

her waterline eighteen watertight

compartments made her unsinkable she

carried torpedoes and was the first

major warship to run on steam turbines

her eight engines propelling her at an

unprecedented twenty one point six knots

Andrew Gordon is an authority on

dreadnought

dreadnought laid down the gauntlet to

every major naval power in the world

they had no either to build dreadnoughts

themselves or linguish major pass status

dreadnought changed everything in

america Japan and Germany new

battleships already approved were rushed

into construction

[Music]

the word dreadnought became synonymous

with the new and more powerful

battleship amazingly one of dreadnaughts

near contemporaries survives to this day

she is the battleship Texas launched in

1912

Lord along the Gulf Coast near Houston

the Texas stands as a monument to the

thousands of battleship sailors who

served with her from 1914 through two

world wars

[Music]

the guns on the texes were controlled by

primitive computers armor plate on her

sides was a full 12 inches thick each

turret was manned by 24 sailors who

lived and worked in dark cramped

quarters the Texas reminds us of the

primitive conditions aboard the first

modern battleship Steve Nelson is a

historian and head curator of the Texas

what makes the USS Texas so similar to

HMS dreadnought are these big guns now

these are 14-inch guns the dread-nots

had 12-inch guns and the way these guns

worked was the two crew members had to

man this floating raft

drop that down into position

the 14-inch shell was ran all the way up

the breech 400 pounds of powder was

placed in behind the shell the crew had

to grab the ramp again making sure that

it breaks in the middle closing up the

breech was closed the crew had to jump

into tight confined spaces like this

buckled themselves in and communicated

with their crew members through this boy

stood ready to fire

ironically dreadknot would never fire

her great guns and anger yet within the

decade her existence would propel the

world into war

June 28 1914 the Archduke of Austria and

his wife are assassinated by anarchists

the world explodes into war

[Music]

German submarines attack British

merchant shipping then on May 30 1916

the German fleet steams to sea for its

first confrontation with England's Grand

Fleet

the decade-long arms race approaches

Armageddon the dreadknots meet off the

coast of the danish peninsula called

cutler

250 warships fight the greatest sea

battle the world has ever seen when it

is over 25 ships have been sunk 8465 men

killed over 1,000 wounded

John Sumida is an historian and

authority on the Battle of Jutland as

his Eric grows they are at Admiralty

headquarters on London's Pall Mall the

problem to the people who sat in this

room was that the battle had not

succeeded in gaining the crucial

objective the destruction of the high

sea fleet the battle did succeed in

proving that the dread-nots were

vulnerable the German reaction was to

keep her battleships in port for the

remainder of the war the British had

failed to win an overwhelming victory at

Jutland because the success of their big

guns at long distances in the smoke and

haze was only two or three percent of

hits two shots fire at the Battle of

Joplin was her battle fleet was prepared

before the war for a battle that was

going to take place at much lower ranges

the British were working on a system of

firing battleship guns at very long

ranges it was based on the work of

Arthur Hungerford Pollin who created a

primitive computer before the word

computer had been invented Polly

developed the idea of using very

advanced range finders that were

gyroscopically stabilized against the

motion of his own ship a very advanced

analog computer very advanced systems of

transmitting the calculations that

computer to the guns the polland system

would have greatly improved accuracy but

was too expensive and was rejected by

the Admiralty they'd been informed by

their intelligence that the Germans

intended to fight at very short ranges

their intelligence was dead wrong this

raised huge question marks over the

whole way the British Royal Navy did its

business Admiral Beatty was in close

contact with the board of Admiralty who

sat in this room he said there's

something wrong with our bloody ships

today and something wrong with our

system

in the closing days of World War one in

the Adriatic Sea an Italian speedboat

fires its torpedoes at two austrian

dreadknots

[Music]

a combat cameraman aboard the togedda

watches as two milky white tracks head

for the same Stefan

these pictures document the first

sinking of a battleship by a simple

torpedo exploding below her armor belt

where she was to prove as vulnerable as

any other ship the primitive camera

grinds on as nearly 1,000 men are lost

[Music]

days later the war is over the Allies in

their defeated foe gathered to set the

terms of peace at Versailles and as

Germany's captured high seas fleet makes

its way through internment at the Scapa

Flow Naval Anchorage north of Scotland a

secret plan to seal its fate is already

in place on the morning of June 21 1919

German sailors aboard their captured

ships carry out their orders scuttling

51 vessels including their prize two

battleships rather than hand them over

to England as prizes of war their

rotting remains still litter the bottom

of Scapa Flow

[Music]

as the new decade gets underway

disarmament is the mood of the day the

worldwide focus of attention is on the

battleship that single most expensive

symbol of a nation's military strength

the cry for the destruction of these

major weapons and the distribution of

the peace dividend into social programs

is not unlike the mood that swept

America after the Cold War in the spring

of 1921 Brigadier General of the army

Billy Mitchell learns the Navy is

preparing to bomb the captured German

battleship Faust Friesland as part of

its ongoing tests of air power versus

sea power

for Mitchell air power is an idea whose

time has come

he fervently believes that the airplane

will make armies and navies obsolete

July 19 1921 is an auspicious day Billy

Mitchell has gathered 50 correspondents

and 300 dignitaries to observe the

events as a military band begins the

festivities at Virginia's Langley field

[Music]

the crowd watches throughout the day

mitchell's pilots drop bomb after bomb

but damage is minimal

the next day Michels Martin bombers are

equipped with two thousand-pound ship

killer bombs they are the biggest bombs

in the world today they will find their

mark some are set to explode 30 feet

beneath the surface of the water as if

multiple torpedoes are striking the ship

from below where she carries no

protective armor finally the house

Friesland slips beneath the waters of

the Chesapeake just 21 minutes after the

day's work began air power has met the

battleship head-on and it's been a bad

day for the Navy and so in the fall of

1921 with Mitchell's triumph as prologue

the international disarmament

conferences begin in Washington when the

meetings are over guns on all existing

warships are limited to 14 inches and

displacement to 35,000 tons no new

battleships are to be built for 10 years

others must be destroyed

France is given equality and tonnage

with Italy as is Britain with the United

States Germany is to be kept inferior to

everyone including the Japanese who are

angered when they are forced to accept a

battleship strength well below Britain

and America some will later say on the

day the conference ended World War 2

began

[Music]

soon Japan and Germany would embark upon

the path of rearmament and conquest

within two decades the world will once

again be at war and once again the

battleship will play a major part it is

1939 Adolf Hitler has overrun Eastern

Europe and at sea German u-boats once

again prey on Britain's merchant fleet

Nazi surface Raiders capture crews then

sink their ships once its Raider is the

German battleship Admiral Graf Spee

her captain Hans Langsdorf is a veteran

of the First World War he is known for

his humane leadership in the past year

he has destroyed nine merchant ships

without the loss of a single life I

think he had a real sense of

responsibility for his ships company and

he felt that decisions he had taken

himself to risk a ship and risk them

should not leave his men into very

dangerous situations now in the closing

weeks of 1939 Hitler dispatches lonsdorf

to intercept British cargo vessels off

the coast of Uruguay he was going to the

River Plate to find a convoy a convoy

that he would sink together with the

escort and he had been given the

strictest of orders but the last thing a

German Raider should do was engage

British warships but for some unknown

reason Langsdorff disobeys perhaps he

thinks any British warships in the area

will be small and easily sunk aboard the

British Cruiser Ajax Commodore Henry

heartwood has been hunting the Graf's

pay for months now he guesses

exactly where Langsdorf is heading and

with the two other cruisers under his

command hms exeter and achilles he

steams to intercept on the Groff's pay

Langsdorf sights the masts of exeter

think she is alone and opens fire the

Battle of the River Plate has begun

the graph space gunnery is superb Exeter

is hit first then Ajax still Harwood

manages to direct the Ajax's guns on the

graphs pay Exeter fires her torpedoes

the Germans must turn hard to avoid them

in there by leaved the field of battle

Langsdorff orders the graphs paid to the

neutral harbor at Montevideo he pleads

for time to make repairs but the

Uruguayan authorities refuse the ship is

badly damaged and her captain has

received two head wounds the grafts

famous leave in 72 hours

Langsdorff radios Berlin for

instructions at 5:25 on Sunday afternoon

17 December 1939 this wounded symbol of

Hitler's Navy weighs anchor and heads to

sea outside the harbour the British

warships wait a huge crowd has assembled

to watch the battle to come

but there will be no battle just beyond

the three-mile limit the battleship

turns west and anchors

captain Langsdorff and his officers

depart the ship to find safe haven in

Buenos Aires

[Music]

shortly afterward explosions wrecked the

Graf Spee

two days later alone in his hotel room

Langsdorff commits suicide he was found

lying on the journal ensign the ensign

of the ship perhaps trying to atone with

his own sacrifice for the disaster he

had brought upon the German Navy July

1940 in London Prime Minister Winston

Churchill confronts a new crisis France

has fallen to the Nazis the fate of her

Navy is yet to be determined

France had a first-class Navy and if it

had fallen into German hands ven the

British security would have been

threatened American security would have

been threatened and the whole naval

situation would have been transformed

the neutralization of the French fleet

was a necessary condition for the

survival of the United Kingdom Churchill

forbids French ships and British ports

and put to sea he dispatches a powerful

squadron of warships to confront what

remains of the French force in the

Mediterranean at a place called

mers-el-kebir algeria it is an

impressive show of British sea power 235

thousand ton battleships the carrier Ark

Royal and leading the squadron Britain's

ultimate symbol of naval supremacy the

battle cruiser HMS foot at 42,000 tons

with eight 15-inch guns the hood is

considered the most powerful warship in

the world

at 32 knots she is also among the

fastest HMS hood is the embodiment of

British sea power an imperial status

symbol

aboard the hood in command of the

British strike force is Vice Admiral

James Somerville he anchors his flotilla

at Gibraltar and prepares to send his

emissary cedric holland to reason with

the french admiral Marcel's and Sewell

in a final briefing to his officers

aboard the hood Somerville is grave I am

ordered to inform the French they must

either bring their ships to British

harbours and fight with us steam with

reduced crews through a British sport

and demilitarized their ships

immediately or scuttle them should the

French be unwilling we must then destroy

the French ships for two days

Holland travels back and forth between

Junsu and Somerville the Admiral is

immovable if he accepts any of the

British options he will betray his word

to the Germans and France will be

punished so shortly after noon on July 3

1941 John the port of mears el Kebir

were four French battleships and a

collection of auxiliary vessels lied to

find Lee at anchor France and England

have not fired a shot at each other in

125 years

the British battleships open fire

in just 10 minutes three French

battleships

then the destroyer are out of commission

[Music]

Churchill has called it the deadly

stroke when it is over 1290 men of the

French Navy are dead 1000 more have been

wounded the french admiral presides over

the mass burial

he says if there is a stain on the flag

it is certainly not on ours

aboard the hood Admiral Somerville

writes to his wife we all feel

thoroughly dirty and ashamed I think it

was the biggest political blunder of

modern times the action of the British

squadron that summer of 1940 remains a

controversy but at the time the

symbolism was clear

Churchill was determined to demonstrate

to the United States that Britain was

serious about staying in the war Britain

was not going to do a France and

therefore Britain was worthy of American

support control of the Mediterranean was

an essential element of the British war

plan in 1940 on 11 November just four

months after the attack on mears el

Kebir the British carrier illustrious

maneuvers into position for the first

time in naval history the British will

attempt a surprise attack by

carrier-based aircraft against an enemy

naval base their target the Italian port

of Toronto

they're bombs and torpedoes wreak havoc

on the ships of Mussolini's fleet

John meal of the Fleet Air Arm was in

the first wave of planes we were

absolutely Kaka who we really were

because we we saw at once that we had

reduced the Italian fleet to on a par or

perhaps even less than a lung think so

no longer were you really any immediate

danger to us in the Mediterranean

we also felt that we had put one in the

eye of the battleship boy shall I call

them or the big ship gunners who in

effect ruled the Navy in those days

word of the missions unqualified success

catches the attention of the top ranking

officer in the United States Navy

Admiral Harold Stark he is concerned

that what happened to the Italian fleet

at Toronto could easily happen to the

American fleet secluded in Pearl Harbor

Admiral Stark sounds the alarm which

goes largely unheeded in Washington but

not in Tokyo on hearing the news from

Toronto the commander-in-chief of

Japan's combined fleet Admiral Yamamoto

turns to his chief of staff and says an

air attack on Pearl Harbor might be

possible now especially as our air

training has turned out so successfully

[Music]

spring 1941 the Japanese continued their

aggression in Indochina and sign a war

pact with Germany most of Europe is

under the Nazi boot Hitler was pleased

with his new Japanese ally as he

presides over the launch of Germany's

newest most formidable weapon the

battleship Bismarck the ship is referred

to as he in deference both to his

namesake the great Prussian Chancellor

and the masculine warrior tasks for

which it was created

on one speed trial in the Baltic he

reaches thirty point eight knots the

ship most eight 15-inch guns and a

sophisticated fire control system

Bismarck's armor consumes 40% of the

ship's weight the battleship is the

perfect symbol for the Third Reich and

yet Bismarck is far too valuable to

place in harm's way its mission is to

hunt enemy merchant ships as do the

other German Raiders on May 19 1941

Bismarck steams to sea on its maiden

voyage even before Hitler learns of its

departure the British are tracking

Bismarck's progress

[Music]

four days later the battleship is

located by the superior radar of the

heavy cruiser Suffolk now the Royal Navy

knows Bismarck is on the move

racing for the North Atlantic HMS hood

and Prince of Wales are dispatched to

intercept

by 5:45 on the morning of 24 may the

hood and Prince of Wales have closed

within 13 miles of bhisma put fires

first

Bismarck immediately returns fire the

first shelves strike the hoods fuse

torpedoes at mid ships and she explodes

battle was over in a matter of minutes

but blew into a huge explosion witnessed

in the horror from Prince of Wales a

hoods are going at 28 knots the stern

section virtually drove herself into the

sea and the bow section canted up a

final salvo was seen being fired from

the foremost guns uselessly into the sky

in in a few seconds it was gone

of the ships total company of 1419 three

survivors cling to life rafts in the icy

water only one signalmen Ted Briggs is

alive today I felt myself being dragged

Daryl and I was trying to get away and

the next thing I knew was a sudden

missing just seemed to shoot to the

surface when I came up there wasn't

another soul inside I looked around and

she was about 50 yards away and she was

vertical with the water and the B turret

was just going under I panicked and I

turned and swam as fast as I could away

from her and when I looked around again

she'd gone though is on the upper deck a

lot were killed and wounded before she

before she went and the others I suppose

were just taken care of pacify suction

but only three of us came up she was a

beautiful proud ship but unfortunately

with a glass jaw

hms hoods Glassjaw was a function of her

design armor had been sacrificed for

speed

[Music]

the next day the victorious Bismarck a

hole in its bow from a shell fired from

Prince of Wales he's short on fuel and

heads directly for France

[Music]

the Royal Navy had been utterly shocked

at the loss of hood ships right across

the Atlantic converged towards the

likely area of bhisma in some cases

without orders they had to find bhisma

they were going to sink that ship one

way or another 26 May 1941 10:30 a.m.

[Music]

a Catalina flying boat dives through the

clouds for a better look at a huge ship

below it is met with a hail of gunfire

from the Bismarck Tralee oil at 20 knots

less than 12 hours from freedom and

France but only 50 miles away is the

British carrier Ark Royal within minutes

15 of the Ark Royal swordfish are in the

air most of their torpedoes will miss

but one jams the Bismarck's rudder and

plants the seeds of his destruction

Royal Navy battleships will finish the

job Bismarck died under very severe

bombardment was shocked pieces at close

range

it's very bloody and nearly 2,000 men

died

with human tragedy a very stout ship

slow death

pieces in less than half an hour the

greatest German warship of all time

rolls over and sinks the victim of four

hundred shells 15 well-placed torpedoes

and British resolve to revenge the hood

[Music]

but fall of 1945 after more than six

years of the fiercest fighting the world

has ever seen all of Germany's battle

ships have been sunk in Japan's monster

battleship her last hope for victory is

also at the bottom of the sea World War

two is over

[Applause]

[Music]

the once mighty Empire of Japan lies in

ruin President Harry Truman from

Missouri prepares for peace he has

determined that the unconditional

surrender of Japan will take place most

symbolically upon the deck of the

battleship Missouri in Tokyo Bay the

Americans have come back to Japan to

anchor very near the spot where in 1853

Commodore Matthew Perry anchored to

demand that the Japanese open their

nation to the West the events of the day

will be carefully documented 170

reporters photographers and radio sound

men swarmed the decks of the USS

Missouri to record sounds and images

that will be seen around the world for

years to come to this day the battleship

Missouri remains the most historic of

All American battleships for naval

historian and battleship veteran Paul

Stilwell the Missouri is an heroic

symbol for on her deck one ERA ended and

another began and so it was on September

2nd 1945 the General Douglas MacArthur

came to this ladder at 9:01 on that

Sunday morning while the Japanese were

waiting for him to come down and accept

the surrender of a proud but defeated

nation as the general walked forward on

his left was an American flag flown out

from Annapolis for the ceremony it had

been on board Commodore Matthew Perry's

flagship in Tokyo Bay in 1853 farther to

the left for dozens of American officers

wearing khaki the Japanese ahead of them

were in top hats and morning coats

japanese looked up to this towering

superstructure and saw hundreds of pairs

of eyes boring down at them there was an

eerie silence on board the deck of the

Missouri as General MacArthur came to

the end of his walk standing just about

here his hand trembling slightly at 9:02

he began a short speech looking beyond

the war we are gathered here to conclude

a solemn agreement at 9:04 foreign

minister Mamoru Oshii omitsu signed on

behalf of the Japanese nation then the

military representative then General

MacArthur signed for the Allied powers

finally one by one the representatives

of the Allies came forward these

proceedings are closed and so onboard a

battleship ended the greatest war in

human history

today the Missouri remains the pinnacle

of Battleship design and technology

still ready it would seem for another

fight or yet another symbolic mission on

that infamous Sunday morning in 1941

Japan had sought to destroy every one of

America's battleships

in a single stroke yet here on the deck

of a battleship they surrendered without

condition

to the overwhelming force of the United

States and her allies

the living symbol of that force remains

the battleship Missouri Missouri captain

Lee case she is a ship with a heart and

soul and the soul of the ship has always

been and always will be the past present

and future sailors that serve honor

[Music]

in peace and war the tradition of the

American battleship sailor grew large

enhanced by competition of every kind

they were like rival schools cheering on

their own

[Music]

battleships sailors have long been a

special breed perhaps because of the

extraordinary team work required to man

the guns and fight the ship or the

special symbolic nature of the

battleship or simply because they knew

they were aboard the Navy's best their

ship became their home and their home

was a matter of pride

[Music]

between 1920 and 1941 America's fleet

included up to 18 battleships that

cruise the oceans of the world to train

their crews and fly the flag a powerful

symbol that the American Navy was a

genuine deterrent to any would-be

aggressor and among those pre-war

American battleships was the USS North

Carolina

[Music]

today she rests as a state memorial in

Wilmington honoring the more than 10,000

North Carolinians who fought and died in

World War two a visit

aboard the North Carolina is a visit

back in time here some 2,500 men once

lived and worked and carried on the

business of war in a city at sea

[Music]

the north carolina's engines could drive

the ship at 27 knots six knots faster

than any previous American battleship

[Music]

here rest the nine great guns of remain

battery fired two thousand three hundred

and ninety six times in nine operations

by crews that often worked around the

clock in the suffocating heat of the

Pacific
[Music]

captain Dave Choi is executive director

of the North Carolina memorial he

explains how the crew worked the guns

this is the lower projectile flat from

where the crew would take the chosen

type of ammunition be at the

twenty-seven hundred pound

armor-piercing or the 19 hundred pound

high-capacity projectile and raise it up

to the gun house to be placed in the

barrel

each steel barrel weighs 96 tons and can

be loaded in 30 seconds the first

projectile is already in place to be

raised up to the gun house once this

projectile is clear the next projectile

is slid into place a full nine gun

broadside of armor-piercing projectiles

delivers a total weight of 24,000 pounds

and can penetrate more than 20 inches of

the strongest hardened steel for every

projectile it takes six ninety pound

powder bags the crews down here will

take the bags out of the tanks put them

on the conveyance from here they're

passed one at a time to the powder flat

and then six of them together are going

to be raised up to the gun the

projectile when the transfer tray lays

down is then rammed into the barrel in

the second phase the first three bags of

powder come out of the hoist and are

separated and then the second three bags

are rolled into place in the third phase

the six bags of powder would then be

rammed into the barrel the primer

attached to the last powder bag the

breech closed and the gun is ready to

fire the shells are hurtled over 2,000

feet per second as the gun recoils on

himself a distance of four feet

at a range of nearly 20 miles with the

guns and maximum elevation the

trajectory is Sept miles high and the

projectile becomes an armor-piercing

bomb to hit a moving target from a ship

which itself is moving pitching and

rolling requires a complex system of

fire control deep below deck is the

north carolina's plotting room and the

ship's analog computers these primitive

yet rugged computers called range

keepers and their electrical

switchboards control the guns a stream

of information from directors high up in

the superstructure is relayed into the

controlling range keeper the course and

speed of the ship and of its target ship

wind direction and velocity temperature

of the powder and the air type of

projectile time of flight gun where

velocity of the ocean current and more

the gun is aimed not at the target but

where the target will be when the

projectile gets there link to the

controlling range keeper is a

gyroscopically operated device called a

stable vertical the guns actually remain

stable and can be aimed with great

accuracy while the ship rolls and

pitches beneath them the 5-inch guns

were controlled by the same kind of

computers arranged keepers as the 16

inch guns but Lodhi

was a manual operation Dave joy the

5-inch gun uses a projectile and a

single powder case as opposed to the

16-inch gun which uses a projectile in

six powder bags so it is simpler for the

operators to load the mount they will

lay the projectile and the powder bag in

the tray and then ran the two pieces

into the barrel takes about 47 sailors

to fully man a 5-inch mark

today visitors relive what it was like

to serve aboard such as ship

in passageways and living spaces below

the main deck thousands of battleships

sailors made their home and ships like

the North Carolina they slept and ate

and worked and played and worked

[Music]

the galley served up three meals a day

and then some

there was a store

and a post office

and on a battleship there was ice cream

at the soda fire there was a newspaper

a tailor

and a cobbler and always there were

decks to polish as night falls the North

Carolina looms large against the

Wilmington skyline her great guns glow

in the moonlight as she waits yet

another day to welcome her visitors

eager to know what it was once like

aboard one of America's most decorated

battleships although the North Carolina

came home to stay

others would soon return to the battle

line in defense of freedom Sunday 25

June 1956 divisions of the North Korean

army spearheaded by over 100

soviet-built tanks crossed the 38th

parallel to invade South Korea the

United States through the United Nations

is committed to defend South Korea but

what remains of America's once great

battleships rests in mothballs

[Music]

only the Missouri the last battleship

commissioned by the United States Navy

is still at sea among her peaceful and

symbolic missions the Missouri traveled

to South America and brought President

Harry Truman home from an international

conference in Rio de Janeiro in 1947 he

and his family enjoyed life aboard the

historic warship he mixed with the crew

took walks and actually waited in line

at the barbershop he admitted to being a

first-time crosser of the equator and

accepted his initiation as a Polliwog

and high spirits from 1948 to 1950 the

world's most famous battleship was at

sea as a training ship when North Korean

troops marched into South Korea she was

quickly ordered back to Norfolk to be

loaded with supplies and live ammunition

the Missouri would be going back to work

as a battleship in time she would be

joined by her three sisters of the

iowa-class the Iowa Wisconsin and New

Jersey wall 4 reactivated from mothballs

for wartime duties to protect the fast

carriers in bombard North Korean

positions ashore

[Music]

in September 1950 the battleship

Missouri has fought through two

hurricanes arriving too late for support

of the American invasion at Incheon now

equipped with a helicopter for spotting

her big gun speak once again

just before Christmas 1950 the Communist

Chinese came into the war on the side of

the North Koreans seven Chinese

divisions converged on a single division

of American marines at Chosun reservoir

the Marines fought their way to the tiny

port city of Hungnam the Missouri was

there the Royal was aboard

we fired night and day it was a warning

to the Chinese and North Koreans not to

interfere with the Marines coming off

the beach Hunnam was in flames the

American marines along with North Korean

civilians their goats and chickens had

escaped last of the UN soldiers had set

charges in the ammunition dump to keep

it from the approaching Chinese as the

Missouri wait anchored to leave the

harbor the earth shook with a gigantic

explosion

while the Missouri was steaming in

Korean waters her sister ship the New

Jersey was being recommissioned

[Music]

by May she was stationed off the North

Korean port city of pen Song at 5:00 in

the morning of May 20 the guns of the

New Jersey were fired in anger for the

first time since 1945 after six months

of operations off the coast of Korea the

New Jersey is relieved by her sister

ship the response endure and for six

months in 1952 by the Iowa before the

war is over all four iowa-class

battleships will have seen action in

Korean waters

after career there were diplomatic

cruises training missions and NATO

maneuvers but in November 1957 the

Wisconsin completed her final cruise and

followed her three iowa-class sisters

into the mothball fleet for the first

time since the 1890s the United States

was without even one active battleship

throughout the first half of the

politically-charged 1960s america became

increasingly involved in a war in

Southeast Asia

perhaps a battleship could save American

lives but the battleships of the

iowa-class slept in mothballs then in

1967 the word came down bring back the

new jersey within months she would be

guided into drydock at the Philadelphia

Naval Shipyard where her great hull

would leave the water for the first time

in a decade the men of the shipyard had

done this job before some of them when

she was first built in the early 1940s

from staffing high in the superstructure

and it's spaces below the men of the

Philadelphia yard would bring the ship

back to life updating her electronics

for the Navy of the 1960s finally after

nearly a year of work the reborn New

Jersey steams triumphantly to sea

on September 29 1968 the world's only

active battleship arrived off the coast

of Danang South Vietnam ready for work

[Music]

captain of the New Jersey at the time

was the colorful J Edward Snyder the

commanding officer the field hospital

said that he was taking incoming

incoming beings that the North

Vietnamese were shelling his hospital

while they were trying to do operations

and would I consider putting a lobbing a

shell over his Hospital just for the

heck of it to try to see if that would

stop them and I said well I'll be

perfectly willing to do that let me take

a look at what the situation is and of

course one of my officers said you can't

fire over your own troops and I said

they're not troops they're the hospital

he says well that's worse I said I'll

shut up we're gonna do it anyhow so we

would stand up there between the hours

of 1 o'clock and 3 o'clock in the

morning fire randomly two shells

directly over the hospital have the

explosion go several thousand yards over

the hospital and not one time during the

30 days we did that did the hospital

take incoming from the Vietnamese

throughout her tour in Vietnam the New

Jersey was the constant object of

attention from the press on one occasion

a reporter approached captain Snyder and

asked about the ship's real

effectiveness I said to him well why

don't you ask the people we're

supporting for heaven's sakes they're

the people that know whether I'm

effective or not or whether the ship's

effective

so he goes ashore he comes back and he

shows it to me he plays me the tape and

the last line of the tape was if it

hadn't been for the big J they would

have shaft our ass by June of 1969 the

New Jersey was back home in friendly

waters and only six months later on a

damp and chilly day in Bremerton

Washington an old story was being

repeated once again for the second time

the New Jersey had been consigned to the

mothball fleet her new captain robert

Penniston voiced the feelings of many

when he said the hour cometh and now is

to say farewell rest well yet sleep

lightly and hear the call

then in the fall of 1979 Iranian

militants seized America's embassy in

Tehran

the Soviets invaded Afghanistan and the

United States was perceived by some as

weak unwilling or unable to act but by

1981 America had a new president and

Ronald Reagan's Secretary of the Navy

John layman had new ideas to build an

enlarged fleet organized around aircraft

carriers and recommissioned iowa-class

battleships by summer President Reagan

had signed the new defense legislation

and all four of the iowa-class ships

were on their way back they would be

transformed modernized with the very

latest of weaponry no longer would their

offensive action be limited to the range

of their historic 16-inch guns

eight box launchers for 32 Tomahawk

cruise missiles with a range of 1,500

miles and for quadruple canister

launchers for 1600 cien harpoon

anti-ship missiles were mounted in the

super structures for Vulcan phalanx

weapon systems would provide defense

against enemy aircraft and incoming

missiles new communication systems air

search radar and improved living spaces

equipped the Iowas for the 1980s to

replace and refit what was required of

the original equipment no longer

manufactured

the Navy secured tons of items from

America's museum battleships the North

Carolina Alabama and Massachusetts the

1982 recommissioning of the new jersey

costs 326 million dollars more than

three times what it costs to build er in

1941

but to secretary layman intent on

creating a new Navy symbolic of

America's status as a world power she

was more than worth it by 1983 the New

Jersey is bright and new once again she

cruises as the centerpiece of a new

battle group she's part of a

peacekeeping force off the coast of

Lebanon for six months

she cruises the coast and shells Syrian

gun positions ashore in time she's

joined at sea by the USS Iowa and her

sister ships Missouri and Wisconsin

often what do you have on skunk that

five degrees off the port bow

yes sir it's a skunk india bearing two

five five 21,000 course zero 75

very well all stations report ready for

call far all stations report and ready

call fire on a routine training mission

in the spring of 1989 as the crew of the

Iowa prepares to fire the center 16-inch

gun in number two turret something goes

terribly wrong

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47 sailors are killed in a tragedy that

to this day has not been fully explained

and as the Cold War comes to an end the

next year the Iowa and her sister the

New Jersey are again to be

decommissioned only the Wisconsin and

Missouri continued to cruise and train

with the modern Navy flying the flag

awaiting the day when they too will be

returned to mothballs sold a scrap or

converted as museums
[Music]

no one yet realized that America's two

remaining battleships would soon fight

their third war perhaps their final war

in Operation Desert Storm the battleship

was once again an integral part of the

American strike force from their decks

Tomahawk cruise missiles were launched

at targets up to 800 miles away in Iraq

and Kuwait they were so accurate and

destructive that eventually the

coalition ran out of target no hostile

fire ever reached the battleships

the relentless bombardment from their

16-inch guns helped pave the way as the

troops of the coalition entered Kuwait

City unopposed and all the while the

battleship sailors aboard their ships

watched their success as did the rest of

the world the forces of the coalition

declared victory on February 28th during

the final days of the land war the men

of the Missouri had performed for four

straight days without sleep in the best

tradition of the battleship sailor Lee

case sailors on other ships are always

watching sailors on battleships they're

trying to emulate them they would like

to be there in their place they know

that they're in a position where they're

always on display and the sailors on

board a battleship have to carry out the

tasks that they're assigned to do but

they have to do them better than the

rest of the fleet and therefore they're

always six inches taller than the rest

of them

on the 6th of March the Wisconsin

Department of the Missouri heads for

home on the 21st

they will sail into a post-cold war

world of military downsizing and critics

who still remember the tragic explosion

aboard the Iowa by September that

Wisconsin has been decommissioned and

the Missouri's days are growing shorter

but she will make one last symbolic and

ceremonial voyage she is going back to

observe the anniversary of the event

that plunged America into World War two

Paul Stillwell one morning in early

December 1991 it was my privilege to be

here on board the battleship Missouri as

she steamed in the Pearl Harbor channel

for the last time as we went in on the

portside where the more in case where

the battleships had been in December

1941 when the Japanese attacked and in

my mind's eye I could see the smoke and

the flame billowing up where hundreds of

American sailors were killed

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the past and present intertwined in the

memories of young and old 50 years ago

to the day their thoughts float back to

that Sunday morning when many thought

the era of the battleship had come to an

end

for the Missouri symbol of all the great

battleships of the Second World War it

has been a journey back in time the next

chapter in her long life can now begin

March 31 1992 the Long Beach Naval

Shipyard

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her equipment in activated her

compartment stripped of every usable

item

the world's last active battleship is to

be decommissioned

[Music]

now she seems but a symbol of past

glories the last of her breed of

thoroughbreds for a hundred years they

changed the world into which they had

been born

dreadnought began an arms race that

never seemed to cease to this day major

powers still seek the ultimate weapon

for the first 50 years of its life the

battleship was that weapon the nuclear

weapon of her day now one by one

America's last battleships have been

retired fitting memorials to the

thousands who died in war Texas

Massachusetts Alabama

North Carolina

and now the Missouri is in receipt of

her final orders her Gong silenced her

system shut down she will pass from

history into legend and take her place

moored near the battleship Arizona as a

memorial in Pearl Harbor

- great warships that marked the

beginning and the end of the greatest

conflict in human history

1907
01:37:49,720 --> 00:00:00,000
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