Thread: Big guns from the battleship Missouri find new homes

Big guns from the battleship Missouri find new homes

Virginia, Delaware and Arizona are getting 118-ton, 16-inch-diameter barrels for monuments.

By Hugh Lessig, Daily Press
March 10, 2012, 3:56 p.m.

Portsmouth, Va.— For about 20 years, gun barrels of the mighty battleship Missouri have sat in silence at the St. Julien's Creek Annex of Norfolk Naval Shipyard.

They have seen better days.

They stood as silent witnesses on Sept. 2, 1945, when Japanese leaders walked onto the deck of the Missouri and formally surrendered to end World War II. Months earlier, the guns helped hasten the war's end by hurling 2,700-pound shells onto the islands of Iwo Jima and Okinawa.

This month, the massive gun barrels — no longer needed in an age of guided missiles and armed drones — began a second life more in keeping with their storied past.

Organizations from Virginia, Delaware and Arizona plan to display a Missouri barrel as a monument to history. But first, someone has to move them.

Lockwood Brothers of Hampton, Va., was hired for the job. A crew showed up Wednesday with a heavy-lift crane. Each barrel is 16 inches in diameter and about 68 feet long and weighs about 118 tons.

"In the regular course of business, we move transformers, generators, power plants," said Dan Clark, project manager for Lockwood. "To be involved in something like this with the Navy that has historical significance, it's exciting for our company."

Perhaps the only people more excited were the folks from Delaware and Arizona who came to witness the transfer onto long flatbed trailers.

In Delaware, the Fort Miles Historical Assn. has been searching for a 16-inch gun for some time, said Harry Winn, a board member. The same type of gun was installed at Ft. Miles during World War II to guard passage along the Delaware River to industrial sites and fuel depots.

"There were nine different batteries at Ft. Miles," Winn said. "We've been trying to get a 16-inch gun for a couple of years, and now we have one — in our sights, so to speak."

The barrel going to Delaware is labeled #371; the Japanese delegation passed by it on their way to sign the Instrument of Surrender.

The Virginia site is at Cape Charles on the Eastern Shore, controlled by the state Department of Game and Inland Fisheries.

Jim Drake, Arizona's deputy secretary of state, said the third Missouri barrel would complete a World War II memorial at the state Capitol in Phoenix.

The monument will be flanked on one side by the Missouri barrel and on the other by a 14-inch barrel from the battleship Arizona. It was taken off the ship before its sinking at Pearl Harbor in 1941.

Drake said the Arizona barrel would represent the beginning of the war, and the Missouri barrel its end.

hlessig@dailypress.com

Massive gun barrels from battleship Missouri find new homes - latimes.com

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