About a Battleship ...
Sept. 16, 1990
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| There's
Just Something About a Battleship ... |
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| Texas City
Sun Sept. 16, 1990 |
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| By MAX RIZLEY, Jr. | |||||||||
| You know, there's just something about a battleship. | |||||||||
| Right now, over in the Persian Gulf, our Navy is out in force, prowling about in the most modern, most technologically advanced warships in the world. They are the best of the best, sexy, sleek beasts, packing enough firepower to blow all of Iraq to cinders. | |||||||||
| There are mammoth nuclear aircraft carriers, the latest supersonic interceptors and fighters parked nose-to-wingtip on their flight decks; there are destroyers with DC-10 engines that can drive them through the seas at freeway speeds; there are cruisers armed with computer-guided missiles that could shave off Saddam Hussein's mustache from half an ocean away. | |||||||||
| And then there's a battleship -- the USS Wisconsin -- better than 40 years old, veteran of the Second World War, which, despite the addition of a few modern bells and whistles, still boasts as her main attraction three batteries of old-fashioned 16-inch guns; they can hurl a slug as heavy as a pickup truck better than 20 miles, and blast a hole in the ground big enough to hold a football game in. | |||||||||
| You aren't alone if you think the old Wisconsin is a bit of an anachronism. There are those who say that such a relic is out of place in today's microprocessor Navy, that she has no role on the modern battlefield, that even if she can lob a shell 20 miles, we've got cruise missiles that can cross a continent. | |||||||||
| Indeed, they have tried more than once to have Wisconsin and her three sisters, Missouri, New Jersey and Iowa, returned to the mothballs from whence they came. | |||||||||
| Oh, but what a mistake that would be. | |||||||||
| Those modern ships just don't make the statement a battleship does. | |||||||||
| Yes, they may have the megatonnage to martyrize Saddam and everyone else in the hemisphere, but it's all stowed in innocuous little canisters or squirrelled away below decks, out of sight and out of mind. They pack quite a physical punch, but they don't have the sheer power of intimidation a battleship has, with its own awesome armament arrayed on deck for all to see. | |||||||||
| And that intimidation factor is important; played right, it can mean the difference between war and peace. | |||||||||
| Generals and admirals have always known that. In the history books, "intimidation" is spelled "gunboat diplomacy" and it works like this: You send your biggest, heaviest-gunned ships over to wherever trouble is brewing, and they steam into the local harbor and sit there. Just sit there, that's all. | |||||||||
| If you're the resident troublemaker, the sight of all those guns -- big guns -- very big guns -- pointing at YOU -- has the same effect as the slap-click of a shotgun slide at a barroom brawl. Things get real quiet, real fast, without a shot being fired. | |||||||||
| Over there in the Gulf right now, Saddam and his commanders are watching our Navy parade back and forth past his doorstep. The carriers, and frigates, and destroyers, and cruisers, are all quite impressive, if not obviously threatening. | |||||||||
| But then, ah, enter the Wisconsin. She emerges from the Gulf haze like a grey ghost -- long, low, and mean, bristling with destruction -- the sheriff sauntering through the swinging doors with Ol' Betsy casually cradled on his arm. | |||||||||
| Slowly, the turrets -- each of the three has in turn, three 16-inch-bore guns -- rumble, and groan, and creak, ponderously training nine deadly black maws on the shoreside audience. | |||||||||
| This isn't a hidden threat, this ship's showing you exactly what she has planned for you, spelling it out in terms dreadfully clear in any language. | |||||||||
| Those guns make one heck of a statement. The brain may comprehend the far greater potential of the nuclear missiles concealed in that cruiser over there, but the sight of the guns on that battleship goes right to the gut and twists it into knots of primordial, staring-down-the-barrel fear. | |||||||||
| Any warship can blow you to kingdom come. But when you want to make a point -- well, there's just something about a battleship. | |||||||||
| --30-- | |||||||||
| (ED. NOTE -- Unfortunately, since this writing, Wisconsin and her three sisters have all been laid up -- permanently, it would now appear.) | |||||||||
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