Replying to a message of Carol Shenkenberger to Bob Ackley:

 >> Back in about 1953, the CO ran the USS Missouri aground on a sand bank
 >> at Newport News.  He was newly assigned from submarines and got onto
 >> the wrong side of the buoys that mark the channel.  Everybody on the
 >> bridge was telling him to get back in the channel but he kept right on
 >> going the way he was.  In a sub it probably wouldn't make much
 >> difference as they only draw about ten feet of water on the surface,
 >> but a battleship draws something over 35 feet.  The Navy nailed
 >> everybody on the bridge, and IIRC it took three months to get her off
 >> that sand bank.

 CS> Like the 'willramit' incident.  The CO is responsible for the training
 CS> of  everyone so yes, his fault.  That time, truely so in all ways.

 CS> They should not have hit any watchstander if it was logged that they
 CS> objected.

That's now, this was then.  Just about everybody on the bridge was telling
the skipper he was outside the channel and he ignored all of them.  If memory
serves all of the officers on the bridge at the time were set far down their
respective promotion lists and the skipper was (obviously) relieved of his
command.

I'm not sure where I read about the incident, it might have been in Malcolm
Muir's excellent book "The Iowa Class Battleships," which has photos of all
*six* of them building, after completion and in battle.  It also contains a very
rare photograph of all four of the commissioned Iowas steaming together, that
only happened *once*.  Yes, *six* Iowas, Illinois and Kentucky (BB45 and 46,
not sure which was which) were under construction when the war ended in
1945 and were never completed.  Illinois was dismantled on the building ways,
Kentucky's hull was finally launched in 1947 (mainly to get it out of the way).
If memory serves, Kentucky's bow is on Wisconsin; Wisconsin's bow was damaged
in a collision with a destroyer, so they lopped it off and replaced it with the bow
from Kentucky's hull.  Shortly thereafter, Kentucky, with about 20 feet of
Wisconsin's
bow sitting on the main deck, was hauled off to the scrapyards; her engines were
used in a couple of supply ships then building, if memory serves, Camden was one
of them.

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