Talk:USS Wyoming (BB-32)

Sponsorship?

What does sponsored by Miss Dorothy Eunice Knight mean? The normal meaning of sponsored is something like provided the funding for, which I assume is not the meaning here. -- RoySmith (talk) 23:12, 14 January 2007 (UTC)

Read "sponsored" as "christened", as in smashing the champagne bottle on the bow.--J Clear 02:10, 6 August 2007 (UTC)

"Sponsor" of a ship was an honorary position, often associated with some connection to the Navy or name-sake state (battleship (see USS Arizona)) or city (cruiser (see USS Baltimore)).Naaman Brown (talk) 23:01, 5 December 2008 (UTC)

World War I

I realize that before July 1920 battleships were disignated as Battleship Number and after were designated as BB- but all the current day research would refer to USS Wyoming (BB-32) rather than USS Wyoming (Battleship Number 32). What form should be followed in battleship histories? Naaman Brown (talk) 23:18, 5 December 2008 (UTC)

I believe in the (BB-32) style. I've never seen "(Battleship Number 32)" or anything like that in widespread use. —Ed 17 ^{(Talk / Contribs)} 19:35, 7 December 2008 (UTC)

GA Review

This review is transcluded from Talk:USS Wyoming (BB-32)/GA1. The edit link for this section can be used to add comments to the review.

Reviewer: Ed! (talk · contribs) 12:36, 13 May 2013 (UTC)

• "was the lead ship of her class of dreadnought battleships, was the third ship of the United States Navy named Wyoming, although it was only the second named in honor of the 44th state." -- Inconsistency in referring to the ship as "she" vs. "it"
  • Fixed
• "where she became the flagship of flagship of Rear Admiral Charles J. Badger, the commander of the Atlantic Fleet."
  • Fixed
• "Early in the war, the Navy briefly considered converting Wyoming back to her battleship configuration, but decided against the plan." -- was this because it was cost ineffective or some other reason?
  • Conway's doesn't say, but presumably because the cost would have been too high for what the returns would have been.
• "Due to her extensive use as a gunnery training ship, she claimed the distinction of firing more ammunition than any other ship in the fleet during the war." -- Is there an estimated number of rounds fired?
  • DANFS has a random sampling from November 1944, but not total figures. Extrapolating from that, I'd wager she fired 2-3 million rounds during the war.
• "Wyoming finished her gunnery training duties in the Chesapeake area on 30 June," -- since this is a new paragraph, I suggest adding the year.
  • Done
• The references should be alphabetized.
  • Fixed
• Four of the images have extra text at the top, which people usually ask me to trim in my own articles (suggestion only)
• Duplicate links tool returns one result, and there is at least one dab link.
  • Fixed
• External links all appear to be working. All images appear to be properly licensed. I see no issues with article stability or neutrality.

Placing the article on hold pending improvements. —Ed!^(talk) 13:55, 13 May 2013 (UTC)

Great work! Passing the GA. —Ed!^(talk) 19:52, 13 May 2013 (UTC)

comments

the article mentions seven calibers but lists only five: I suppose missed 12 and 0.5 in. By the way, DANSF is unclear since contains a .30 caliber that I feel a misprint of 0.50. (I would feel more sound the distinction of firing the greatest mass, but this is not a physics article)

The last guns appear worth of a comment. I have Silverstone (US warships ...) that contains the last photo and a photo at the same time of the right side and declares the armament 10/127 and 4/76. I long believed that the 10/127 were in three axial and two beam turrets, with the 4/76 in four single two per side. The wiki text and a more careful look at the turrets suggests instead that the two sides were fairly different, i.e. that the right side housed 4/127 and the left 4/76. If so, this should be stated.

Also interesting would be a comment on the firearc of the beam 127 guns in the april 1944 photo (I feel that the inner turret was unable to fire and was used only for training in the loading -- I have read somewhere that the Gearing destroyers had a similar training device) and the statement that the removed 12 turrets were the 3rd, 4th and 5th one (I am not sure of these positions, however --- it is already present, in the table while I searched it in the text)

pietro78.5.38.90 (talk) 17:49, 5 July 2017 (UTC)

question to Pennsy22

dear Pennsy22, I see that you have fixed the 7-vs-5 problem that I have noted in the previous note. But you fixed it by adding 0.30 round instead of 12 in ones. I do not feel that the Wyoming ever made practice with 0.30 calibers, since already the 20 mm ones were felt without real stopping power against the kamikaze. Moreover these machine guns do not appear in the table at any time. I feel DANSF in error about this caliber. pietro151.29.247.143 (talk) 22:48, 8 October 2017 (UTC)

Since at this time Wyoming was a gunnery practice ship it would make since that they were using .30 caliber guns to practice with, while stationed on another ship they probably wouldn't use .30 caliber guns it was probably a lot cheaper to fire off a lot of this caliber to practice using a machine gun for the first time. Now understand, I wasn't there, so this is just a guess, but DANSF does list the size of gun and the number of rounds used in November 1944, so I feel this is probably correct. They also list 1.1-inch guns and ammo, which had been determined in 1942, to be insufficient. You also have to remember that these men were being trained for any ship in the navy and smaller ships quite possibly could have still been mounting .30 caliber guns. I hope this helps and maybe someone else will chime in too.Pennsy22 (talk) 08:56, 10 October 2017 (UTC)

Oof. This is difficult. I can't find anything in Friedman's US Naval Weapons/Naval Anti-Aircraft Guns and Gunnery to prove that .30s were on Wyoming, but I also can't find anything to disprove it (eg a comprehensive list of weapons tested on the ship). I have to say that could be a little fishy, as Friedman notes that the delay in upgrading the fleet was in .50 -> Bofors guns—but again, I haven't found anything to prove/disprove it, and it wouldn't surprise me if they had the .30 guns on Wyoming for any number of reasons. Ed ^{[talk] [majestic titan]} 04:11, 13 October 2017 (UTC)

Dear sirs, I am a strange guy that feels interesting what is irrelevant for other people and conversely. I expected to trigger a discussion on the symmetry of the last guns and that the .30/.50 dilemma was a fairly minor detail. Instead I see that this is the main point for at least two authors. The presence of the .30 weapons seems to rest only on DANSF. It is surely a top authority, but the statement

                  During that month, she fired 3,033 5-inch shells, 849 3-inch; 10,076 40-millimeter; 32,231 20-millimeter; 66,270 .30-caliber; and 360 1.1-inch. 

implies that fired 66270 rounds from the 0.30 weapons that are never declared on her and ZERO rounds from the 0.50 that are declared. Ockham razor suggests a 0.30/0.50 misprint. The cheapness is a valid argument, but I feel that they allowed training practice only at distances so short to be irrelevant for the actual fight.

Another question: in "The gunners conducted experimental gunnery drills with towed sleeves, drone aircraft, and radio-controlled targets", the last two targets appear synonymous (at least in my Webster, but I am italian and my english is what is). As a courtesy to non-english readers, it is possible to add a link to the difference? Perhaps the two terms are now the same but in the slang of the 1940s were different (perhaps a plane from which the pilot jumped off and flew with blocked commands?)?. In Greene (War Planes of 2nd WW) vol 4 pag 15-16 one finds the RP-63 Kingcobra with "1488 lb armor skin against which frangible bullets fired by gunnery students shattered". Does drone refer to this? pietro151.29.212.169 (talk) 07:50, 14 October 2017 (UTC)

The asymmetry of the two sides is strikingly shown in www.klueser.eu (it is not a top reference, but is enough to justify a search in more official documents). My previous comment about the RP-63 may explain the presence of 0.30 calibers, albeit I still feel that is 0.50 misprinted. pietro.2001:760:2C00:8001:B4F3:30A3:1229:92C3 (talk) 19:22, 25 October 2017 (UTC)

The WIKI article Kingcobra explictly says that these frangible bullets were 0.303. In view of this, I now believe that 0.30 is not a misprint. pietro 78.5.38.90 (talk) 10:55, 28 October 2017 (UTC)

At this point, the statement that in wartime trained on 7 calibers implies that NEVER fired the 12 in shells. If this is true, it seems noteworthy enough to receive an explicit mention (e.g. something like "the conversion to AA trainer was triggered by ...", that should be a literature statement that an expert INTERNET user (I am not) should find with non-huge effort). AS you see, I resemble much more the syntax checker of a compiler than an author ... pietro151.29.163.236 (talk) 06:41, 1 November 2017 (UTC)

She had been converted to a training ship in 1931, because of the London Treaty, that is stated in the article. Pennsy22 (talk) 03:32, 3 November 2017 (UTC)

true, I wanted to say "reconverted from 12-in trainer to AA trainer" (excuse my english that may be misleading) pietro. — Preceding unsigned comment added by 78.5.38.90 (talk) 10:25, 3 November 2017 (UTC)

I don't know that there's any need to be that specific - "gunnery training ship" is perfectly fine. Also, there's no indication that she never fired the 12-inch guns - the figure cited in DANFS is just one month's expenditures. We shouldn't extrapolate from that at all. Parsecboy (talk) 16:47, 3 November 2017 (UTC)