Battleship Wisconsin: Wis + Ky = “Wisky”

Battleship Wisconsin combined a distinctively bulbous bow with a lengthy slender hull below the waterline, allowing its 212,000-horsepower propulsion plant to drive the 45,000-ton ship at speeds exceeding 33 knots. In a serious collision with the escorting destroyer USS Eaton (DDE-510) off Hampton Roads on 6 May 1956, both ships returned to Norfolk for repairs after Eaton was heavily damaged and Wisconsin’s bow was mangled. Workers at Newport News Shipyard and Dry Dock Company removed the bow from the unfinished Iowa-class battleship Kentucky (BB-66) within forty-eight hours, and over the next sixteen days Norfolk Naval Shipyard workers fitted a 120-ton section of Kentucky’s bow to Wisconsin’s hull. Above the anchor wells, the bull-nose remained original to Wisconsin, while a sixty-eight-foot section from the bulbous bow aft came from Kentucky. Crew members had lovingly called the ship “Wisky” since it was commissioned in the spring of 1944, and after the replacement bow was added, one sea tale held that the nickname reflected the “WIS” of Wisconsin and the “KY” of Kentucky.

Norfolk, Virginia · United States