USS New Jersey (BB-62) was decommissioned three times and recommissioned twice — a record that reflects the ambivalence of a Navy that could never quite decide whether it needed battleships and kept finding that it did. First commissioned in 1943, she fought in the Pacific War, was mothballed, reactivated for Korea, mothballed again, brought back for Vietnam in 1968 when no other gun platform could reach the targets that needed reaching, mothballed again, and then returned to service one final time in 1982 — modernized with Tomahawk cruise missiles and Harpoon anti-ship missiles, her 16-inch guns still intact, her purpose once again relevant in a world that had not quite finished finding uses for a battleship. She served off Lebanon in 1983 and 1984, firing her guns in combat one last time in a war that the Cold War never became. She is now a museum ship in Camden, New Jersey, moored in the Delaware River, her 16-inch turrets still trained to seaward.
The Ship
USS New Jersey (BB-62) is an Iowa-class battleship, commissioned on May 23, 1943. The Iowa class represented the pinnacle of American battleship design — fast enough to operate with carrier battle groups, armored heavily enough to withstand significant damage, and armed with nine 16-inch guns in three triple turrets that could fire projectiles weighing up to 2,700 pounds to a range of more than twenty miles. Four Iowa-class battleships were completed: Iowa, New Jersey, Missouri, and Wisconsin. All four had careers that stretched across multiple wars and multiple generations of naval strategy.
Vietnam, 1968-69
New Jersey's third commissioning, on April 6, 1968, came in response to a specific operational need: the Navy needed a naval gunfire support platform capable of delivering large-caliber fire against heavily fortified targets in North Vietnam that lighter weapons could not effectively engage. Her 16-inch guns could fire shells weighing nearly a ton and a half to ranges that kept the ship well outside the effective range of most coastal defenses. She served off Vietnam for seven months, firing more than five thousand 16-inch rounds against targets along the coast of North Vietnam and in support of ground operations in South Vietnam. It was the last time a battleship fired its guns in the twentieth century — until 1983.
Lebanon, 1983-84
New Jersey was recommissioned on December 28, 1982, as part of the Reagan-era Navy buildup, modernized with Tomahawk cruise missiles and Harpoon anti-ship missiles while retaining her original 16-inch battery. She deployed to the Mediterranean in 1983 during the Multinational Force in Lebanon, and on December 14, 1983, she fired her 16-inch guns against Syrian artillery and militia positions in the mountains above Beirut — the first time since Vietnam that a battleship had used her main battery in combat. The targets were artillery that had been firing on American forces and positions; the range was close by the standards of naval gunfire; the effect on the surrounding terrain was, as a 16-inch battery tends to produce, decisive.
The Lebanon deployment was controversial, connected to a complex and tragic period of American involvement in the Middle East. New Jersey's gunfire was one element of a policy that was reassessed in early 1984 after the bombing of the Marine barracks. She departed the Mediterranean in early 1984.
Final Service
New Jersey continued in service through the late 1980s, participating in exercises and deployments that demonstrated the battleship's continued relevance — or tried to, against a Navy that was increasingly skeptical that the enormous crews and high operating costs of the Iowa class justified their capabilities in the post-Cold War world. She was decommissioned for the final time on February 8, 1991, a few weeks after Operation Desert Storm began in the Persian Gulf — a war in which she did not serve but which demonstrated the precision standoff strike capability of the Tomahawks she carried.
If you want to honor the battleship tradition or know someone who served aboard New Jersey, browse the New Jersey collection — cruise shirts, license plate frames, and more.
Legacy
USS New Jersey is preserved as a museum ship at the Battleship New Jersey Museum and Memorial in Camden, New Jersey, commissioned as a museum in 2001. Her four active service periods across five decades of American naval history make her one of the most operationally diverse ships in the Navy's history — a ship that fought in three different conflicts, in three different eras, with the same guns and the same fundamental purpose. The battleship that couldn't stay retired is now the battleship that can't be forgotten.