The U.S. Navy’s Most Decorated Battleship

When the Iowa-class battleships were designed in 1938 most naval officers expected that battleships would mostly fight against other battleships with armor-piercing shells from their big guns. In the actual event, American battleships would mostly fight against coast defenses with high-explosive shells, and against aircraft with medium-caliber and light guns (although medium-caliber anti-aircraft fire was largely ineffective until the introduction of the proximity fuze in 1944).

A major constraint on the Iowa-class design was an “escalator clause” in the Second London Naval Treaty of 1936, which raised the maximum allowable displacement of battleships from 35,000 tons to 45,000 tons. Another constraint was the width of the locks in the Panama Canal, which limited the ship’s beam to 108 feet.

USS New Jersey (BB 62) was the second of six planned Iowas. The last two, Illinois (BB 65) and Kentucky (BB 66) were cancelled before completion and later scrapped. New Jersey was launched on 7 December 1942, the first anniversary of Pearl Harbor, and commissioned on 23 May 1943. She served as Admiral Halsey’s flagship in WWII, provided gunfire support to American troops in Korea, Vietnam, and Lebanon, and was extensively modernized in the 1980’s, fitted to launch Harpoon anti-ship missiles and Tomahawk cruise missiles. The need for an enormous crew, especially to operate the obsolete 600 p.s.i. steam propulsion plant, eventually made battleships too costly for even the US Navy to maintain.

This book is a revised and updated version of the original 1986 edition. The author notes that “the economics of publishing have dictated a shorter volume than the first, one with a somewhat different format” (p. xi). The book’s ten chapters are organized chronologically:

    I. From Drawing Board to Warship: September 1940 - January 1944

   II. World War II - Everything Except A Battleship: January 1944 - August 1945

  III. Postwar Doldrums: August 1945 - June 1948

  IV. Korea, Midshipmen, and Korea Again: September 1950 - July 1953

   V. The In-between Years: July 1953 - August 1957

VI. Politics and the Vietnam War: August 1967 - December 1969

VII. From Mothballs to Lebanon: July 1981 - May 1984

VIII. Battleship Battle Group: May 1984 - November 1988

  IX. Going Out in Style: November 1988 - February 1991

   X. New Role for an Old Ship: February 1991 - Present

New Jersey is preserved as a museum ship on the Delaware River in Camden, New Jersey, opposite the Philadelphia Naval Shipyard where she was built.

The book is well-illustrated with over 300 photos, and detailed line drawings that track the ship’s configuration over the years. This is a volume that is sure to please readers who are battleship enthusiasts, and it is worthy to sit on the shelf beside the superb standard reference by Garzke and Dulin, Battleships: United States Battleships, 1935-1992 (Naval Institute Press, 1995)

The author, Paul Stillwell is a retired naval officer who served onboard New Jersey. He worked for thirty years at the US Naval Institute as an oral historian and editor of Naval History magazine. He is the author or editor of fourteen books, including five on battleships.

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Our Reviewer: Mike Markowitz is an historian and wargame designer. He writes a monthly column for CoinWeek.Com and is a member of the ADBC (Association of Dedicated Byzantine Collectors). His previous reviews in modern history include To Train the Fleet for War: The U.S. Navy Fleet Problems, 1923-1940, Comrades Betrayed: Jewish World War I Veterans under Hitler, Rome – City in Terror: The Nazi Occupation 1943–44, A Raid on the Red Sea: The Israeli Capture of the Karine A, Strike from the Sea: The Development and Deployment of Strategic Cruise Missiles since 1934, 100 Greatest Battles, Battle for the Island Kingdom, Abraham Lincoln and the Bible, From Ironclads to Dreadnoughts: The Development of the German Battleship, 1864-1918, Venice: The Remarkable History of the Lagoon City, The Demon of Unrest, Next War: Reimagining How We Fight, Habsburg Sons: Jews in the Austro-Hungarian Army, Hitler's Atomic Bomb, The Dark Path: The Structure of War and the Rise of the West, The Last Hot Battle of the Cold War, Operation Title: Sink the Tirpitz, A Light in the Northern Sea, and A Street in Arnhem, British Naval Gun Mountings, The Indian Rebellion, 1857-1859, Dread Danger: Cowardice and Combat in the American Civil War, and From Ironclads to Admiral

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