Path: utzoo!utgpu!watserv1!watmath!att!cbnews!military
From: wb9omc@ea.ecn.purdue.edu (Duane P Mantick)
Newsgroups: sci.military
Subject: USS Wisconsin
Message-ID: <1990Aug14.033546.8342@cbnews.att.com>
Date: 14 Aug 90 03:35:46 GMT
Sender: military@cbnews.att.com (William B. Thacker)
Organization: AT&T Bell Laboratories
Lines: 45
Approved: military@att.att.com



From: wb9omc@ea.ecn.purdue.edu (Duane P Mantick)
>>From: voder!nsc!dtg.nsc.com!worden@decwrl.dec.com (Dennis Worden)
>I am interested in the fourth Iowa Class Battleship, the 
>USS Wisconsin.  The other three have been recommissioned,
>The Iowa, New Jersey and Missouri, but I haven't heard
>anything about the Wisconsin.
	Wisconsin was also recommissioned and will probably be one of the
	two that WON'T get mothballed (cry, whimper....).

>Also, My father-in-law was stationed on board her during
>WWI and insists that they did a surprise raid on Japan
	I HOPE that the "WWI" was a typo - I suspect you meant to
	enter "WWII" as NONE of the Iowas was around during WW One. :-)

[mod.note:  But it'd make a darned interesting plot for "Final Countdown 2"
8-)  (For those who have forgotten, "Final Countdown" was a movie in which
a nuclear carrier sailed through a time portal and found itself near 
Pearl Harbor on 7 December, 1941.)  - Bill ]

>by sailing through the Sea of Japan (he remembers it as
>about 35 miles wide) and shelling both mainland Japan
>and whatever is on the east side of the Sea.  This sounds
>a little funny to me, would you send a Battlegroup along
>the length of Japan??  Seems like it would be easy pick'ins.
	I should say, nearly suicidal.  I would be extremely surprised
	if this were true.  Even at the end of the war, none of the
	Allied military commanders even wanted to contemplate getting
	near the Japanese mainland.  For instance, an invasion
	of the mainland was considered to cost the lives of
	approx. one MILLION soldiers.....that is a VERY high
	cost.  This has often been stated as a reason why the
	use of the Atomic Bomb became attractive as a way to
	end the war.


BTW, the USS Wisconsin, BB64, has had a very interesting history.  During
the Korean conflict, she served as Gen. Douglas McArthur's floating
HQ during the landings at Inchon.  Later on, she was involved in a 
collision with another ship that left Wisconsin with a rather large
gap in the bow, but sailing under it's own power.  The photo looked
almost like somebody took a big bite out of her.....

Duane