This is a second-hand story told to me by a colleague. He had been an FT in USS New Jersey when she served on the gunline off Viet Nam. The NVA (North Vietnamese Army) had a method of fortification that worked really well for them. theyd dig deep trenches, cut down huge trees, lay the big heavy trunks across the trenches, and then pile up about 20 feet of loose dirt on top of it all. Hit them with 500 or 1000 lb bombs or 5 or 6 inch naval shells, and all they did was blow holes in the loose dirt. Then the New Jersey appeared on the scene. This, I believe, was her first fire mission. We had a spotter on a hill overlooking what was known to be a pretty large complex of what were commonly called hooches, and he called in the coordinates for New Jersey to shoot at them. The ship told him they were going to send a single round over, to see how well it worked. They set the fuse on delay, which meant the round would detonate a tenth of a second after it hit. Shot . . . . splash . . . .. out. It took a while for the round to travel nearly 20 miles, and when it hit, the spotter unleashed a stream of curses, obscenities, and foul language that put a lot of (deleted)s on the transcript. When he finally regained enough composure to speak in sentences, he reported, Theres this great huge crater in the middle of the complex, and . . . around it . . . TRENCHES! Everythings collapsed! The shell had burrowed some way down in the tenth of a second , and blew up UNDER all those hooches, lifting the roofs and dropping them back in disarray. The ship then said they were going to drop a second round on the same coordinates, to see how well the fire-control computer worked. (The Mark One Able computer is a marvel of analog computing. It can account for the movement of the ship, the curvature and rotation of the earth, and whatever other factors affect those big shells over long distances.). Shot . . . . splash . . . .. out. After the same long delay, the spotter reported, It landed right in the crater! What deflection? No visible deflection! It landed right in the middle of the crater! And now the crater is twice as big! This with the ship cruising along at ten or 15 knots around 20 miles away. Yeah, that computer still worked. He told me a couple of others; Ill post those over the next few days.
Posted on: Mon, 26 Jan 2015 03:03:29 +0000
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