A Short History of the Battleship New Jersey (BB-62)
USS New Jersey (BB-62) was an Iowa-class battleship built at the Philadelphia Naval Shipyard and launched on 7 December 1942, exactly one year after the attack on Pearl Harbor. She was commissioned in May 1943 and soon became one of the most distinguished capital ships in the United States Navy. Over the course of her career, New Jersey served in World War II, the Korean War, the Vietnam War, and the Cold War rearmament of the 1980s, a record that helped make her the most decorated battleship in U.S. Navy history.
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Period
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Role in Service
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1943–1948
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World War II combat service and early postwar duty
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1950–1957
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Recommissioned for the Korean War
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1968–1969
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Recalled for the Vietnam War
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1982–1991
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Reactivated during the Reagan-era naval buildup
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2001–present
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Museum and memorial in Camden, New Jersey
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In World War II, New Jersey entered combat in the Pacific in early 1944. She supported the Marshalls campaign, took part in the raid on Truk, and fought through major operations including the Marianas campaign, the Battle of the Philippine Sea, and the Battle of Leyte Gulf. She also served as flagship first for the Fifth Fleet and later for Admiral William F. Halsey’s Third Fleet, underscoring her importance not merely as a gun platform but as a command ship.
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After the war, New Jersey was briefly decommissioned in 1948, but the outbreak of the Korean War brought her back to active service in November 1950. During combat tours in 1951 and 1953, she bombarded enemy positions along the Korean coast and demonstrated that the big-gun battleship still had value in shore bombardment. She returned to reserve status in 1957, only to be called back again during the Vietnam War. Recommissioned in April 1968, she became the only U.S. battleship reactivated for Vietnam, delivering heavy naval gunfire against targets in support of American and South Vietnamese forces before being decommissioned once more in December 1969.
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Her final combat-era revival came during the 1980s naval expansion. Recommissioned in December 1982, New Jersey was modernized for contemporary service and saw action during the Lebanon crisis of 1983–84. She later deployed to the western Pacific and Persian Gulf region before her fourth and final decommissioning on 8 February 1991. After some years in reserve, she was struck from the Navy list, reinstated briefly as a mobilization asset, and then struck again in 1999. That same year she made her final voyage back east, eventually opening in October 2001 as the Battleship New Jersey Museum and Memorial in Camden, across the Delaware River from Philadelphia, where she had first been built.
Today, USS New Jersey stands not only as a preserved warship but also as a monument to nearly half a century of American naval history. Her repeated returns to service in four different eras make her unique among U.S. battleships, and her survival as a museum allows visitors to encounter that history in a direct and tangible form.
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Relic Display
Ron Cole's original artwork of the Battleship New Jersey c. 1944 is paired with a piece of authentic World War II-era teak deck from this most decorated battleship in United States history!
Each display is 11x17-inches (artwork size, frames ads 1.5-inches each side) and ships ready-to-hang. Each is signed & numbered 1 through 100.
Authenticity guaranteed for life!
