USS New Jersey BB-62

New Jersey II

(BB-62: displacement 45,000; l. 887'7", beam 108'1", draft 28'11", speed 33 k.; complement 1,921; armament 9 16", 20 5"; class Iowa)

The second New Jersey (BB-62) was launched on 7 December 1942 by the Philadelphia Naval Shipyard; sponsored by Mrs. Charles Edison, wife of Governor Edison of New Jersey, former Secretary of the Navy, and commissioned at Philadelphia on 23 May 1943, Captain Carl F. Holden in command.

New Jersey completed fitting out and trained her initial crew in the Western Atlantic and Caribbean. On 7 January 1944, she passed through the Panama Canal war-bound for Funafuti, Ellice Islands. She reported there on 22 January for duty with the Fifth Fleet, and three days later rendezvoused with Task Group 58.2 for the assault on the Marshall Islands. New Jersey screened the carriers from enemy attack as their aircraft flew strikes against Kwajalein and Eniwetok from 29 January to 2 February, softening up the latter for its invasion and supporting the troops who landed on 31 January.

New Jersey began her distinguished career as a flagship on 4 February in Majuro Lagoon when Admiral Raymond A. Spruance, commanding the Fifth Fleet, broke his flag from her mast. Her first action as a flagship was a bold two-day surface and air strike by her task force against the supposedly impregnable Japanese fleet base on Truk in the Carolines. This blow was coordinated with the assault on Kwajalein and effectively interdicted Japanese naval retaliation to the conquest of the Marshalls. On 17 and 18 February, the task force accounted for two Japanese light cruisers, four destroyers, three auxiliary cruisers, two submarine tenders, two submarine chasers, an armed trawler, a plane ferry, and 23 other auxiliaries, not including small craft. New Jersey destroyed a trawler and, with other ships, sank the destroyer Maikaze, as well as firing on an enemy plane that attacked her formation. The task force returned to the Marshalls on 19 February.

Between 17 March and 10 April, New Jersey first sailed with Rear Admiral Marc A. Mitscher's flagship Lexington (CV-16) for an air and surface bombardment of Mili, then rejoined Task Group 58.2 for a strike against shipping in the Palau Islands and bombarded Woleai. Upon his return to Majuro, Admiral Spruance transferred his flag to Indianapolis (CA-35).

New Jersey's next war cruise, from 13 April to 4 May, began and ended at Majuro. She screened the carrier striking force which provided air support to the invasion of Aitape, Tanahmerah Bay, and Humboldt Bay, New Guinea, on 22 April, then bombed shipping and shore installations at Truk on 29-30 April. New Jersey and her formation splashed two enemy torpedo bombers at Truk. Her sixteen-inch salvos pounded Ponape on 1 May, destroying fuel tanks, badly damaging the airfield, and demolishing a headquarters building.

After rehearsing in the Marshalls for the invasion of the Marianas, New Jersey put to sea on 6 June in the screening and bombardment group of Admiral Mitscher's Task Force. On the second day of pre-invasion air strikes, 12 June, New Jersey downed an enemy torpedo bomber, and during the next two days, her heavy guns battered Saipan and Tinian, throwing steel against the beaches the Marines would charge on 15 June.

The Japanese response to the Marianas operation was an order to its Mobile Fleet: it must attack and annihilate the American invasion force. Shadowing American submarines tracked the Japanese fleet into the Philippine Sea as Admiral Spruance joined his task force with Admiral Mitscher's to meet the enemy. New Jersey took station in the protective screen around the carriers on 19 June as American and Japanese pilots dueled in the Battle of the Philippine Sea. That day and the next were to pronounce the doom of Japanese naval aviation; in this "Marianas Turkey Shoot," the Japanese lost some 400 planes. This loss of trained pilots and aircraft was equaled in disaster by the sinking of three Japanese carriers by submarines and aircraft, and the damaging of two carriers and a battleship. The anti-aircraft fire of New Jersey and the other screening ships proved virtually impenetrable. Only two American ships were damaged, and those but slightly. In this overwhelming victory, only 17 American planes were lost to combat.

New Jersey's final contribution to the conquest of the Marianas was in strikes on Guam and the Palaus, from which she sailed for Pearl Harbor, arriving on 9 August. Here she broke the flag of Admiral William F. Halsey, Jr., on 24 August, becoming the flagship of the Third Fleet. For the eight months after she sailed from Pearl Harbor on 30 August, New Jersey was based at Ulithi. In this climactic span of the Pacific War, fast carrier task forces ranged the waters off the Philippines, Okinawa, and Formosa, striking again and again at airfields, shipping, shore bases, and invasion beaches. New Jersey offered the essential protection required by these forces, always ready to repel enemy air or surface attacks.

In September, the targets were in the Visayas and the southern Philippines, then Manila and Cavite, Panay, Negros, Leyte, and Cebu. Early in October, raids to destroy enemy air power based on Okinawa and Formosa were begun in preparation for the Leyte landings on 20 October.

This invasion brought on the desperate, almost suicidal, last great sortie of the Imperial Japanese Navy. Its plan for the Battle for Leyte Gulf included a feint by a northern force of planeless heavy attack carriers to draw away the battleships, cruisers, and fast carriers with which Admiral Halsey was protecting the landings. This was to allow the Japanese Center Force to enter the gulf through San Bernardino Strait. At the opening of the battle, planes from the carriers guarded by New Jersey struck hard at both the Japanese Southern and Center Forces, sinking a battleship on 23 October. The next day, Halsey shaped his course north after the decoy force had been spotted. Planes from his carriers sank four of the Japanese carriers, as well as a destroyer and a cruiser, while New Jersey steamed south at flank speed to meet the newly developed threat of the Center Force. It had been turned back in a stunning defeat when she arrived.

New Jersey rejoined her fast carriers near San Bernardino on 27 October for strikes on central and southern Luzon. Two days later, the force was under a suicide attack. In a melee of anti-aircraft fire from the ships and combat air patrol, New Jersey shot down a plane whose pilot maneuvered it into Intrepid's (CV-11) port gun galleries, while machine gun fire from Intrepid wounded three of New Jersey's men. During a similar action on 25 November, three Japanese planes were splashed by the combined fire of the force, part of one crashing onto Hancock's (CV-19) flight deck. Intrepid was again attacked, shot down one would-be suicide, but was crashed by another despite hits scored on the attacker by New Jersey gunners. New Jersey shot down a plane diving on Cabot (CVL-28) and hit another which smashed into Cabot's port bow.

In December, New Jersey sailed with the Lexington task group for air attacks on Luzon from 14 to 16 December, then found herself in the furious typhoon which sank three destroyers. Skillful seamanship brought her through undamaged. She returned to Ulithi on Christmas Eve to be met by Fleet Admiral Chester W. Nimitz.

New Jersey ranged far and wide from 30 December to 25 January 1945 on her last cruise as Admiral Halsey's flagship. She guarded the carriers in their strikes on Formosa, Okinawa, and Luzon, on the coast of Indochina, Hong Kong, Swatow, and Amoy, and again on Formosa and Okinawa. At Ulithi on 27 January, Admiral Halsey lowered his flag in New Jersey, but it was replaced two days later by that of Rear Admiral Oscar Badger commanding Battleship Division Seven.

In support of the assault on Iwo Jima, New Jersey screened the Essex (CV-9) group in air attacks on the island from 19 to 21 February and provided the same crucial service for the first major carrier raid on Tokyo on 25 February, a raid aimed specifically at aircraft production. During the next two days, Okinawa was attacked from the air by the same striking force.

New Jersey was directly engaged in the conquest of Okinawa from 14 March until 16 April. As the carriers prepared for the invasion with strikes there and on Honshu, New Jersey fought off air raids, used her seaplanes to rescue downed pilots, defended the carriers from suicide planes, shooting down at least three and assisting in the destruction of others. On 24 March, she again carried out the vital battleship role of heavy bombardment, preparing the invasion beaches for the assault a week later.