The launch of the battleship New Jersey

On 7 December 1942, exactly a year after the Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor, the hull of the battleship USS New Jersey slid into the water at the Philadelphia Naval Shipyard. She was sponsored by Carolyn Edison, wife of the Governor of New Jersey, Charles Edison – the inventor’s son, who in 1937–1940 had been Assistant Secretary and then Secretary of the Navy and had supported the construction of new battleships. The date of the ceremony was no accident. The anniversary of a defeat in which the Japanese had sunk or damaged all eight of the Pacific Fleet battleships in harbour became an opportunity to show that American industry was rebuilding the fleet faster than anyone had expected.

New Jersey is sometimes called America’s largest battleship. That needs qualifying. She was the second of four completed ships of the Iowa class – the largest battleships the United States ever built – but she was neither the first of them nor any larger than the others. The lead ship, USS Iowa, had been launched at the New York Navy Yard on 27 August 1942, and all four ships had virtually the same dimensions. Nor were they the largest battleships in the world: the Japanese Yamato-class battleships were well over ten thousand tons heavier and carried bigger guns, though the Americans learned this only after the war.

Fast battleships

Design work on the Iowa class began in 1938, as the treaty limits on tonnage were ceasing to apply. Japan had refused to observe the restrictions, and the powers raised the permitted displacement of a battleship from 35,000 to 45,000 tons. The Americans wanted fast ships, able to catch the Japanese Kongō-class battleships, which had been modernised to a speed of about 30 knots, and to accompany carrier task forces. Earlier American battleships managed 21 knots, and the newer North Carolina and South Dakota classes 27–28 knots. The first two ships were funded under the naval expansion act of May 1938, pushed through by Congressman Carl Vinson. Iowa was laid down in June 1940 and New Jersey on 16 September 1940.

The ships were 270 metres long and 33 metres in the beam – as much as the locks of the Panama Canal, through which they had to pass between the oceans, would allow. Their designed standard displacement was about 45,000 tons, and after wartime modifications, with full fuel and ammunition, more than 57,000 tons. Steam turbines of 212,000 shaft horsepower gave them a speed of over 32 knots, making them the fastest battleships in the world. The main armament consisted of nine 406 mm (16-inch) guns in three triple turrets, firing 1,225 kg armour-piercing shells to a range of more than 38 kilometres. Twenty 127 mm dual-purpose guns and dozens of Bofors and Oerlikon anti-aircraft guns made them powerful anti-aircraft platforms. In wartime the crew numbered over 2,500, and the cost of each ship was estimated at around 100 million dollars.

A two-ocean navy

Two further ships of the class, Missouri and Wisconsin, were ordered in June 1940, as France was collapsing under the German onslaught. A few weeks later, on 19 July 1940, Roosevelt signed the Two-Ocean Navy Act, which increased the tonnage of the American fleet by some 70 per cent. It provided for the construction of several hundred warships, including more than a dozen aircraft carriers and seven battleships: two more of the Iowa class (Illinois and Kentucky) and five of the still larger Montana class. The still-neutral United States was preparing for war in the Atlantic and the Pacific at the same time, without relying on the British or French fleets.

When war came, priorities changed quickly. Pearl Harbor had shown how defenceless battleships were against aircraft, and the Battle of Midway in June 1942 had been decided without a single shot fired by ships’ guns – by carrier aircraft alone. The shipyards were told to build above all aircraft carriers, destroyers, escort vessels and merchant ships. Construction of the Montana-class battleships was suspended in 1942 and cancelled in 1943. Illinois and Kentucky were never completed. New Jersey and her sisters were lucky, however: they were already so far advanced that it was worth finishing them. The launch on the anniversary of Pearl Harbor was thus in a sense the farewell to an era – one of the last battleship launches in the history of the US Navy. After New Jersey only Wisconsin (also on 7 December, a year later) and Missouri (in January 1944) went down the slipway.

In 1942 American shipbuilding was accelerating to a pace the world had never seen. That same year the first Essex-class aircraft carriers and dozens of destroyers were launched, and merchant yards were delivering Liberty ships within a few weeks of laying their keels. The ceremony in Philadelphia was part of the same story that Roosevelt had been telling since the start of the year: the material superiority of the United States would decide the victory.

Flagship

New Jersey was commissioned on 23 May 1943 under Captain Carl Holden and, after working up in the Atlantic and the Caribbean, moved to the Pacific. She never fought the battleship action for which she had been designed. She served chiefly as an anti-aircraft screen for the fast carrier task forces and as a shore-bombardment ship. In February 1944 Admiral Raymond Spruance, commander of the Fifth Fleet, made her his flagship for the raid on the Japanese base at Truk (Operation Hailstone), during which New Jersey and Iowa took part in sinking the training cruiser Katori and a destroyer. From August 1944 to January 1945 she flew the flag of Admiral William Halsey, commander of the Third Fleet, including during the Battle of Leyte Gulf. In August 1945 she was once again Spruance’s flagship.

Significance

The Iowa class proved the most enduring battleships in history. New Jersey went on to fight in the Korean War; in 1968–1969 she was the only battleship to bombard the coast of Vietnam; and in 1983–1984, after being recommissioned once more and modernised with cruise-missile launchers, she shelled positions in Lebanon during the civil war. She was finally decommissioned in 1991 and since 2001 has been a museum ship at Camden, across the river from Philadelphia, where she was launched. For her service in four wars she received 19 battle and campaign stars and is regarded as the most decorated American battleship.

In December 1942 all this still lay in the future. The launch on the anniversary of Pearl Harbor was above all a symbol: a year after a defeat that was supposed to have paralysed the American fleet, the United States was launching ships larger and faster than those it had lost, while at the same time its carriers and warships off Guadalcanal were already fighting the Japanese on equal terms.