A Piece Of The Battleship New Jersey Comes Home
CAMDEN, NJ (CBS) -- The Battleship New Jersey, long retired from military duty, is looking a little more like she did when she was the pride of the US Navy.
A major piece of her fire power returned this week to the deck of what is now a floating museum in Camden
The Quad 40 was state of the art anti-aircraft equipment in World War II. By the Vietnam conflict, the weapons were removed.
But not all of them wound up as scrap, according to Battleship museum CEO Phil Rowan.
"One was kept as a monument near the Commandant's Quarters there at the entrance to the Philadelphia Naval Shipyard," Battleship museum CEO Phil Rowan told KYW Newsradio, "and we had always wanted to return that to the ship."
It took some cajoling, and a lot of refurbishing, but workers used a crane to lower the giant weapon back to where it once sat on the ship, just in time to mark the battleship's 75th anniversary next month.
Rowan says once they're finished installation, kids will be able to touch it and get a feeling for what it was like to use it. And, on occasion, they'll fire it off, but you can relax.
"We render what's called a naval salute," Rowan added. "That's basically a little bit of gunpowder and a lot of smoke comes out. There's no projectile."