A significant WW II artifact found a new home at the Fort Miles in Delaware. Just before 10 a.m. last Friday crews began lifting a 16-inch gun that once belonged to the battleship USS Missouri. By the end of the day, the 120-ton gun was safely installed in a new carriage, ready for visitors when the park reopens May 26.
Crews from Lockwood Brothers, a subcontractor for Kent Construction, and members of Ironworkers Local 451 were on hand Friday to move the gun into position.
As a small crowd gathered nearby and media set up cameras atop Battery 519, large tethers were slid underneath the gun barrel and attached to a 500-ton crane. As a test, the crane lifted the load slightly while a worker used a carpenter’s level to ensure the load was properly balanced.
The final signal given, the crane came to life, ever so slowly lifting the gun from the truck bed. Guided by ropes, the barrel was swung out over the site, back behind the concrete pad and gingerly maneuvered into the waiting carriage. Midway through the operation, visitors were startled by a loud crack from somewhere, but it had no effect on the work.
With the barrel in place, another crane was brought in to make final adjustments.
“You’re talking millimeters of clearance here,” said Mike Dunkes, a member of the FMHA board of directors, as he watched the operation. “It took years of research to make sure all of the parts went together.”
“This is very unusual for us,” said union business manager Jeff Hendrickson as he watched. “We don’t usually move guns. It’s still a heavy lift, but this is historic.
The cannon once fired 2,700-pound shells to support the invasions of Iwo Jima and Okinawa and witnessed the surrender of Japanese forces in September 1945. It had been in storage at the fort since 2012.
Original caption: Tokyo, Japan: Ceremonies of the Japanese surrender on board the battleship Missouri, 1945. Japanese Foreign Minister Shigemitsu signs as MacArthur braodcasts ceremonies. September 2, 1945 Tokyo, Japan
The USS Missouri, or “Big Mo,” as it is known, was decommissioned after the Korean War, but reactivated in the 1980s. Modernization stripped the battleship of its weaponry, and the nine 16-inch guns were put into storage. The ship took part in initial operations during the first Persian Gulf War, firing Tomahawk missiles at Iraqi coastal defenses. The ship was retired in 1992 and is a museum at Pearl Harbor.
By 2010, the guns were declared excess and naval officials decided to sell them for scrap.
The battleship’s gun was at the Navy’s St. Julien’s Creek Annex near Chesapeake, Va. when McGovern canvassed several historic preservation groups looking for any interested in preserving the weapon. He hit pay dirt with the Fort Miles Historical Association, which had been searching for a 16-inch gun.
“At almost 70 feet long and weighing 120 tons, you don’t just put it in the back of your pickup,”
In March 2012, crews from Lockwood Brothers of Hampton, Va., lifted the gun from its resting place placed it on a trailer which was barged across the Chesapeake to Cape Charles, Va. It was loaded onto a railroad car, making stops in Harrington and Georgetown before it reached Cape Henlopen State Park April 18 of that year.
