1 Million Dollars a Day to Operate a Battleship

all right hi I'm Ryan simanski curator for Battleship New Jersey museum and Memorial today we're in the pay masters office which is used by the ship's sea Cadet Troop but the these are the safes that the money that is paid out to the crew is normally stored in I have often read that it cost 1 million dollars a day to operate an Iowa class battleship in the 1980s but I've never seen actual statistics on what that accounts for this number often comes up because detractors of the battleship program at that time would argue that a million dollars a day is a ridiculous fee to be paying for a ship like this whereas supporters would say it only costs one million dollars a day to operate these ships and they can deliver so much ordinance during that time and blah blah blah blah compared to an aircraft carrier which is three times as expensive so we have gone through one of the ship's command histories to look at what sort of stuff is expended in a given year we chose 1987 because that was on top of the pile because that is an average year the ship is not at War during that time she spends more than half of the Year peer side so it's not like World War II where she's constantly sailing every day she does some Gunnery training exercises and qualifications she runs the engines she's uses the film set for the Robert Mitchum miniseries war in remembrance she has a couple of Admirals come on board her crew puts on a production of Mr Roberts her choir performs at Disneyland it's just the most average year ever for a peacetime Battleship so going from the command history in the year 1987 the battleship expended 260 rounds of 16-inch ammunition so that means the ship fired roughly two rounds every three days so not quite one round per day she expends 628 rounds of five inch ammunition which is a little bit less than two rounds per day she expends 2500 rounds of Sea Whiz ammunition which is basically just one yeah again because this is peacetime these are all training exercises that the ship does and because she was in the yard the opening part of the Year this is mostly stuff from October on where she's expending this uh during that year 567 new Sailors checked on board so that's out of a total approve of about 1600 when operating uh 251 Personnel were transferred 308 members of the crew were separated from the service so they hit the end of their enlistment and retired first term reenlistments are 52 percent which is pretty good retention rate second term re-enlistments are about 12 and a half percent it's less great a career reenlistments are 64 the battleship receives 543 000 pounds of mail which works out to 1500 pounds of mail a day every single day three quarters of a ton of mail were delivered to the ship in her 1600 crew uh outgoing mail seems like the crew sent less messages than they received was 90 625 pounds on the year they are receiving a lot of care packages with stuff in it they're just sending back out letters it seems uh in terms of news media releases 56 on the year which is roughly one per week and community relations events are 17 on the year or a little bit more than one per month and those tend to be they open the ship up for tours or a dependent day or a a tiger Cruise things like that total Provisions consumed on board are 915 000 worth or about twenty five hundred dollars worth a day which is relatively low for a 1600 man crew but remember while she's in the yard she probably doesn't have a full crew and many of these crew are probably on Liberty throughout this period so they're not eating on board or they may be going to the base chow hall for food so that's probably less than normal and yet that's still 695 000 cans of soda and 240 000 candy bars consumed on the year the ship's store sold 22 000 baseball caps throughout the year and and that helps show us what the visitation was like to the ship with a 1600 man crew they aren't buying this many baseball caps these are people who are coming to visit the ship uh the barber shop gave out over 23 000 haircuts that makes enough for 14 haircuts for each of the 1600 crew members so roughly one a month 546 tons of laundry are processed or a ton and a half a day annual payroll for the ship is 11.5 million which comes out to about 32 000 a day issued from this office to the crew it's of course not issued daily but that's the daily salary of the crew yeah I expected payroll to be a significantly bigger number if it's a million dollars a day to run the ship uh that 32 000 is nothing 11.5 million out of a 365 million dollar a year budget for a single Iowa class battleship is nothing at all that 32 000 a day comes out to a an average of 20 dollars per sailor which means that you've got the captain and other people who are making well above that twenty dollars and you've got the boots on board who are making well less than twenty dollars a day it's worth pointing out that again the full crew probably isn't on board so we're just dividing by 1600 off the top of our heads um and enlisted Sailors aren't paid the same sort of salary that we're paid to work here because they're fed by the Navy they're housed by the Navy other things like that so the set remember this is 1987. so also inflation isn't nearly at the same place that it is today so these numbers seem small but um they aren't wildly off twice as much as payroll is the amount they spent on fuel per day so an Iowa class Battleship can hold 2.4 million gallons of diesel in the 80s 2.4 million gallons gets you approximately 30 days worth of fuel which is 80 000 gallons per month if she's steaming continuously a gallon of diesel in 1987 cost about 90 cents which means they spent 72 thousand dollars per day on fuel for the ship or twice what they spent on payroll that being said that assumes that the ship is sailing every single day at her most economical cruising speed which she was not on the entire year the ship only received 3.5 million gallons of fuel remember she only starts getting underway in October of that she offloads 757 000 gallons uses almost 900 gallons of that on helicopters and 4 500 gallons of that is lube oil uh likewise three million gallons of fresh and feed water are distilled by the ship's evaporators also they change out 750 fluorescent tubes that year which is approximately two a day which is a little bit less than what I have to do they see 5590 crew members in Dental or for examination so that's roughly three times for each man they do 3250 examinations so that's roughly two per man uh 3 600 cleanings again about two per man just under 3 000 Restorations so a little bit under two per man 378 extractions and 114 root canals for a total value of three hundred thousand dollars on the year or about a thousand dollars a day likewise Sick Bay saw 8 466 patients so uh that's what about four times per year they gave out 3 200 immunizations again about twice a year 1500 x-rays about once a year per man and uh 5700 prescriptions which is about three prescriptions per man the ship only steamed 5 000 nautical miles in the year of 1987. so that is a very small amount uh remember a single fuel tank will get her 15 000 nautical miles so that's the equivalent of steaming at her most economical for approximately 10 days she really does spend most of her time in Port because it's an average peacetime year so after looking at these numbers it does not seem like it costs a million dollars a day to man the battleship payroll fuel consumption ammunition expenditure is practically free because that's all Bolton paid for already you're doing less than one projectile a day and none of these are particularly large numbers so maybe maybe it's a million dollars a day if you're counting the ship in combat with a full crew with dependents burning everything but in an average year it seems significantly lower than that uh missiles would represent a multi-million dollar expense each however we don't see any expended at all in 1987. so maybe that's another cost that we're missing whereas if the ship was in combat Rippling off all 32 for tomahawks that does represent a hundred million dollars investment while it might have cost a million dollars a day in the 80s to operate the battleship it costs about ten thousand dollars a day to operate her as a museum this is without having to worry about fuel or expending much ordinance although we do go through some black powder not nearly as much as uh they do even in a off year like this you still have to pay for heating air conditioning lighting staff significantly less than 1600 men but a little bit more than 20 a day if you would like to support the continued operation of the battleship there's a link in the description below for ways you can donate what do you think about this number does a million dollars a day seem right let us know what you think in the comment section down below Battleship New Jersey receives operating support from the New Jersey Department of State also from a number of other businesses and private individuals like yourselves we really appreciate your support in addition to supporting us at the link below you can support us by liking sharing and subscribing so more people find about the museum and our Channel thanks for watching

Channel: Battleship New Jersey

Views: 45,179

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Id: Aq6SIsRZBsM

Length: 11min 55sec (715 seconds)

Published: Thu Dec 29 2022