Museum installs big guns

USS Pennsylvania cannons in position

Chris Rosenblum

BOALSBURG — As gently as topping a house of cards, the two cranes lowered the 66-ton gun barrel into its concrete berth.

CDT/Nabil K. Mark

Greg Saylor directs the cranes as guns from the battleship Pennsylvania are mounted for permanent exhibit at the Pennsylvania Military Museum September 28, 2009. CDT/Nabil K. Mark

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On Monday, two cannons, once part of the mighty USS Pennsylvania battleship, finally pointed skyward near the entrance to the Pennsylvania Military Museum.

The historic 14-inch barrels had been on pallets since arriving by truck May 20 from the Naval Surface Warfare Center in Dahlgren, Va. For 64 years, the guns rested in a scrapyard until the museum, once the Navy agreed to loan them, raised more than $40,000 to bring them to Boalsburg.

The Pennsylvania Historical and Museum Commission, which oversees the musuem, paid for the $120,000 concrete pedestal.

Rain showers on Monday glistened the 54-foot long barrels, which volunteers had scraped, sand-blasted and painted battleship gray over the summer. Dave Rhoades wore a yellow slicker and white hard hat to the installation, not about to let the weather dampen his spirits.

“I was hoping for a nice day like the day they came,” said Rhoades, a museum volunteer from Patton Township who led the decadelong campaign. “I’m glad, though, it’s come to fruition.”

A formal dedication ceremony, featuring a Navy admiral, will take place at 2 p.m. Oct. 24 at the museum.

Commissioned in 1915, the USS Pennsylvania served as a fleet flagship during World War I and withstood a hit at Pearl Harbor. For the rest of World War II, she supported most of the major Pacific island invasions, surviving a torpedo off Okinawa in the waning days of the war.

Postwar atomic tests couldn’t sink her either, and she was eventually scuttled in 1948.

Terry McGrory, a State College house painter, figures the Pennsy’s salvos helped protect his father, a Marine. On Monday, McGrory watched the hoisted barrels with pride. He directed the prep work and the application of two coats of epoxy primer and two coats of acrylic gray, computer- matched to the original paint.

“I tell you, it was an honor to do it,” he said.

When he learned on Memorial Day that the museum needed painters, he didn’t hesitate.

“Are you kidding?” he said. “How often do you get to paint guns off a battleship?”

Chris Rosenblum can be reached at 231-4620.