Archive for the ‘battle stars’ tag
Battleship Wisconsin: BB-9 and BB-64 in the Homeport of Naval History
This is the first of three markers related to the Battleship Wisconsin all found alongside the ship beside Nauticus on the Norfolk waterfront. The remaining two Wisconsin markers will appear on the blog tomorrow.
Cannonball Trail
Battleship Wisconsin: BB-9 and BB-64 in the Homeport of Naval History
Location: Alongside the USS Wisconsin, at the foot of Plume St, next to Nauticus, Norfolk, VA 23510
Visited: July 3, 2009, 2:15pm
Transcription of marker:
Battleships bearing the name Wisconsin have graced the waters off Norfolk and Hampton Roads since the beginning of the twentieth century. Ornately designed to show-off the “Stars and Stripes” of the United States, the first battleship Wisconsin (BB-9) was commissioned in 1901. John Philip Souza and the United States Marine Corps Band once performed patriotic marches from the wooden decks of the first Wisconsin. In 1906, President Theodore “Teddy” Roosevelt traveled to Norfolk with many other Americans to bid farewell to the first Wisconsin sailing on a two year voyage around the world with the famed “Great White Fleet.” Serving primarily as a Midshipman training ship during World War I, the first Wisconsin was scrapped in 1922.
During World War II, the second battleship Wisconsin (BB-64) was commissioned under the command of U.S. Navy Captain Earl E. Stone. Born in the “Badger State” of Wisconsin, Stone earlier served as a Naval Academy Midshipman aboard the first battleship Wisconsin (BB-9). Surviving the Imperial Japanese strikes at Pearl Harbor on 7 December 1941, Stone had a key role in organizing the war-winning communications intelligence efforts of the U.S. Navy. For a job well done, he received the highly coveted appointment to command the second battleship Wisconsin (BB-64) in the spring 1944.
Sailing into the embattled waters of the Pacific, the crew of the second battleship Wisconsin earned five battle stars during World War II. Home-ported at Pier 7 on Norfolk Naval Base, the second Wisconsin earned another battle star in the Korean War and, similar to the first Wisconsin (BB-9), served primarily as a Midshipman training ship during the Cold War. During the Persian Gulf War, the crew of Wisconsin (BB-64) coordinated the first Tomahawk missile strikes against Iraq.
My impressions: One of my first trips around the area after I moved down here was to go to see USS Wisconsin. It is certainly an impressive sight to walk down the street and all of a sudden see it once you’ve walked through the gates in front of it. And it is interesting how they wove together the history of the two Wisconsins on this marker (though the repeated specifications of BB-9 and BB-64 through the text grew tiresome, especially since the descriptions of first or second Wisconsin were quite clear already).
Markeroni status: Direct-logged.