Nothing says ‘good morning’ like 5″ batteries, 75 years ago today
This beautiful originial Kodachrome shows the 5″/25cal (127 mm) Mark 10 battery aboard the U.S. Navy battleship USS New Mexico (BB-40) preparing to fire during the bombardment of Saipan, 15 June 1944.
U.S. Naval Historical Center Photograph # 80-G-K-14162
Note the time-fuze setters on the left side of each gun mount, each holding three fixed shells; the barrels of 20 mm cannon at the extreme right; and triple the 14″/50 (34.5 cm) Mark 4 main guns in the background. On the two nearest weapons, note the “Hot Case Man” standing behind the breech and equipped with asbestos catcher’s mitts. Their job was to catch the ejected casing and then toss it out of the way of the gun crew as best they could.
The lead ship of a class of three battleships, and the first ship to be named for the state of New Mexico, Battleship No. 40 was a Great War baby, commissioning 20 May 1918, and famously escorted the ship that carried President Wilson to Brest to sign the Treaty of Versailles in 1919. Missing Pearl Harbor as she was at the time on neutrality patrols in the Atlantic, she came through the Panama Canal on 17 January 1942 and earned six battlestars in the Pacific War.
She was in Tokyo Harbor for the end of the war.
The U.S. Navy battleship USS New Mexico (BB-40) anchored in the Tokyo Bay area, circa late August 1945, at the end of World War II. Mount Fuji is in the background. NH 50232
Decommissioned in 1946 after 28 years of faithful service, she was paid off the next year and sold for $381,600, her value as scrap metal.
I served on a 3inch 50 cal gun crew. I was the “hot shellman”. The fuze setter operates a machine that rotates the projectile in the case which sets the fuse. Various rounds have different purposes, some need the fuse set for altitude or time. The other positions are captain, pointer, trainer, 1st and 2nd loaders, sight setter plus a phone talker and ammo passers.some more complicated guns have even larger crewshttps://maritime.org/doc/destroyer/fiveinch/index.htm
Outstanding. Thank you, Tony and thank you for your service