Pilots from spotter planes would fly inland, view German targets and radio in the coordinates from grids on maps to direct the ship's cannon fire and call in corrected coordinates when the shells missed the targets.
While the ships fired at and destroyed seawalls and other German targets, with a 51 percent accuracy rate-- including knocking out 90 German tanks overall-- "the USS Nevada was hit not at all" despite being a stationary target, according to Dick Ramsey.
The Nevada left Utah Beach and turned to firing upon Omaha Beach, where landing Allied troops "were getting slaughtered" by German machine gun fire.
After the Allied invasion on D-Day which led to Germany's fall, the Nevada shifter to the Pacific Theater and was at the bloody battles of Iwo Jima and Okinawa.
"For 16 days we fired on Mount Suribachi (on Iwo Jima island), he said.
Ramsey served aboard the Nevada for 34 months during the war.
At the end of the war, Ramsey turned down an offer to re-enlist in the Navy, deciding to return to his old job at the Brooklyn Naval Yard, where he worked on the aircraft carrier USS Franklin and later became a lithographer for a newspaper.
"Why me?" he mused on his survival. "Ah well, as they say in France, 'C'est la vie.' "
--GreGen
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