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Battleship upgrades


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When we see the various museum ships we seldom see them in their original configurations.

 

of course we don’t see much of Arizona anyway and Pennsylvania was sunk after being used for experiments at Bikini atoll.

 

Pennsylvania and Arizona were launched before WW I, between 1929 and 1931 their catapult launchers were upgraded from using compressed air to black powder.  Must have been some smoke! With the ship probably sailing into the wind it would have dissipated quickly!

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Unfortunately the black powder may have been what led to the Arizona's demise. The magazine to store it in was adjacent to the main powder magazine for the forward turrets, and it is believed that the bomb that blew up the ship hit the black powder magazine first, causing a chain-reaction with the main magazine. Of course with the ship's remains a shambles they can't prove it, but they believe that's what happened. My source is Paul Stillwell's book on the Arizona.

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That’s interesting and good to know; thanks for posting.

 

Cat Brules

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I wonder, but seriously doubt that the Iowa-class BB's have been retrofitted to their original configurations.  During their last deployments, at least the New Jersey and IIRC the Wisconsin were fitted with vertical launch tubes for Tomahawk cruise missiles.  Not sure about Iowa and Missouri.

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The Iowa's were all modernized in the 80's by removing a large amount of their conventional AA armament and replacing it with launchers for 32 Tomahawk cruise missiles. Also installed were Harpoon anti ship missile launchers as well as several Phalnax CIWS mounts. Their catapults were also

removed and helicopter pads installed. The ships went out of commission in their final configurations.

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Texas, North Carolina, Alabama, and Massachusetts are still basically in their original configuration, with the exception that many parts and fittings have been removed such as the catapults, engine parts and many AA guns. In fact Alabama and Massachusetts were both cannibalized during the 1980s to provide some of the components necessary to get the four Iowa-class BBs back into service. The Iowas of course were extensively modernized with cruise missiles and such and remain in that configuration today, as nobody would spend the time and money to put them back in their WW2 configurations, even if it was possible.

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Texas is actually a WW1 battleship. She was extensively upgraded for her service in WWII. She is the sole remaining example of an early dreadnought design battleship.

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She might be the only one, to boot. I just wish the Enterprise had been saved, out of all the WW II ships, she had the most campaigns and citations and was en it from Dec. 7th until the spring of '45 when Kamikaze pilot Tomei Zei( SP?) damaged her severely enough to require stateside repairs.:blush:

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