PAMILMUSEUM

After 64 years of being warehoused in obscurity and lost in time, a set of relics from the beginning age of the battleships have been rescued from the salvage torches and slated for exhibit at the Pennsylvania Military Museum in Boalsburg, Centre County.

On Wednesday May 20, two 14 inch/45 caliber gun barrels each weighing in excess of 66 tons, traveled from the tidal flats of Virginia into the heart of the Appalachian mountains of Pennsylvania - 200 miles from the nearest ocean.  Their final resting place will be on a specially designed cradle with an exhibit honoring the U.S. Navy and the Pacific Theater of War during World War Two.  Commissioned in 1916, the Pennsylvania was armed with a total of twelve 14 inch guns mounted four massive battleship turrets.  The Pennsylvania patrolled the eastern coastal waters during World War One.  Assigned to the Pacific Fleet in the 1920's she was at Pearl Harbor on December 7, 1941.  Surviving the Japanese attack where she was one of the first ships to return fire, she then was modernized and sent into action participating in a number of island landings during the Pacific Campaign.  In a 1945 overhaul before the end of the war, both of the gun barrels were removed and eventually placed in storage at the Navy Surface Warfare Center in Dahlgren, Virginia. 

"They were re-discovered by a retired naval officer working at the facility.  He contacted us in 1999 after confirming that both guns did come from the Pennsylvania," says museum director, Bill Leech.  "It's taken 10 years of steady, deliberate planning that has been well worth the effort."    

The guns are stowed in a temporary support cog for the summer while workers sandblast and repaint them to Navy grey standards.  A more formal ceremony piping them aboard is scheduled for late August.