USS Iowa firing a 15 gun broadside.
The three basic requirements of a good battleship are firepower (more and bigger guns), protection (to be able to withstand at least equivalent punishment as you can deliver) and speed (to move quickly to a zone of conflict, or run away in the presence of a bigger foe). Although nearly impossible for a vessel to be designed to excel in all three categories, the U.S. Iowa class battleships, (USS Iowa, USS New Jersey, USS Wisconsin, and USS Missouri) come closer to achieving this perfect ideal than any other battleship built. Built with no regard to cost, heavier, longer and wider than the RMS Titanic, and initially fitted with 9 x 16 inch main guns their firepower was considered superior to the biggest guns of any battleship, the 18 inch guns of the IJN Yamamoto, due to their quicker rate of fire. With a normal operating speed of 31 knots (57 km/h) and a theoretical maximum of 35 knots (65 km/h) they were also the fastest battleships ever built.
Entering service in the later part of WW2 however, when aircraft carriers were quickly becoming the most important naval vessels, and there were essentially no longer any enemy battleships left to fight resulted in a very different role for these leviathans of the sea. Firing two broadsides per minute each vessel is capable of putting 16,000 kg of ordnance every minute on a single target with pinpoint accuracy (a figure only matched by the 27,000 kg payload of a B52 bomber), these battleships served largely as artillery platforms (and since the 80's as cruise missle launchers) to blast shore based targets in WW2, the Korean War, Vietnam War, and even the Gulf War in the 1990's.
Best known of the Iowa class battleships is the USS Missouri upon whose broad decks one of the most historic events of the 20th century took place, the Signing of the Instrument of Surrender by Japan, an event that ended WW2. It has also featured prominently in American culture, in the 1977 movie "MacArthur", TV mini-series "The Winds of War", Cher's music video "If I Could Turn Back Time", and in the 1992 movie "Under Seige" starring Steven Seagal.
Allied and Japanese delegations aboard the USS Missouri for the signing of the Japanese surrender.
All four battleships were finally decommissioned shortly after the Gulf War and donated for use as museums. Contrary to the advice of the navy, the US Congress had the Iowa and Wisconsin re-instated to the Naval Register for maintenance in the "mothball fleet" in 1995. These last two vessels were finally removed from the Register in 2006 but are required to be kept in a state of readiness should they ever be needed again.
Straight forward battle plan this time, and hopefully not a long campaign;
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The published co-ordinates would take you to HMNZS Olphert, the Wellington HQ of the Royal New Zealand Naval Volunteer Reserve. The cache is not there. To find the correct co-ordinates you will need to solve the above puzzle.
Fill in the puzzle grid with the fleet as shown on the right, two submarines plus one water segment are already given. Vessels lie either horizontally or vertically in the grid and do not touch even in a diagonal direction. Arrange the vessels such that the number of vessel segments add up verically and horizontally to the numbers in the green squares to the right, and beneath, the grid. Ignore the numbers and letters in the white squares at the top and left when solving the puzzle.
Once completed, use the white squares to find the co-ordinates where a water segment = 0, a submarine segment = 1, destroyer = 2, and so on. For example, E3 would be a 1, but if it was a battleship segment instead of a submarine it would be 4.
Keep an eye out for muggles when retrieving the cache, they can approach from a number of directions, and please be careful to not include any spoilers about the final location in your logs, thanks.
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For more information about geocaching in New Zealand, visit the New Zealand Recreational GPS Society Inc. (http://www.gps.org.nz). |