By 1952, the Korean War wasn’t going well for the North Koreans. Of course, the war was in a stalemate at the 38th parallel, but that had nothing to do with anything the North Koreans had planned. Kim Il-Sung and his regime survived only because of Chinese intervention and Soviet airpower, but the United States and United Nations air forces were still wreaking havoc on North Korean cities and infrastructure.
North Korea fared no better at sea. The Korean People’s Navy had not even a fraction of the preparation the Army did when the Korean War started in June 1950. Back then, it was mostly shallow-water torpedo boats, patrol boats, and small gunboats with some submarines. It was a far cry from the two-ocean, two-front U.S. Navy that the North Koreans were facing on the seas.
Even the communist country’s shore batteries couldn’t match American firepower, as one unlucky North Korean gun crew found out when they actually scored a hit on the USS Wisconsin, a formidable battleship, even in the days before Tomahawk missiles.
After World War II, the USS Wisconsin found itself in the Atlantic Reserve Fleet, but nothing will revive a ship’s status on active duty like an explosive war against the communists. The Wisconsin was respawned almost immediately after the war in Korea began and was recommissioned by March of 1951 and was off the Korean coastline by November. There, it was assigned to bombard enemy troop concentrations, artillery positions and basically anything else that stood between the UN ground forces and their objectives.
Needless to say, it was a remarkable deterrent for any gunboat, smuggler or other enemy ship and took almost no enemy fire during her entire stay in the Korean peninsula. The one exception came on March 15, 1953. That’s when the Wisconsin was hit by a North Korean shore battery. Guns from the “Big Wisky” were shelling North Korean infantry positions, troops trains and even a tunnel for the train when the communists had the audacity to return fire.
A Soviet-made 152mm artillery shell hit the battleship amidship on its port side. The direct hit shattered the Wisconsin’s teak wood planking, shattered the shield of a 40mm gun mount and wounded three sailors. No one aboard the American battleship was killed and the North Koreans didn’t follow up on their hit – which is probably for the best, considering how the crew of the Wisconsin replied to the hit.
The Wisconsin fired a full salvo from all nine of its 16-inch mark-7 guns at the crew that fired the shot, lobbing nine 2,700-pound shells onto the gun battery. It’s highly unlikely the North Korean gun crew survived their encounter with the Iowa-class battleship’s primary weapons, considering how a full barrage could potentially sink an armored aircraft carrier. The Wisconsin’s reply was so lopsided that the USS Buck, a Sumner-class destroyer, was said to have signaled the Wisconsin the message, “Temper Temper.”
Neither the North Koreans nor the Chinese would hit the Big Wisky for the rest of the Korean War, which is good news for anyone who might have to be a target for the Wisconsin’s return fire. The battleship provided gunfire support for the 1st Marine Division and the Republic of Korea’s 1st Corps. By the time the Korean War ended on July 27, 1953, the USS Wisconsin was a training ship for midshipmen from the U.S. Naval Academy.