During the 2011 General Assembly session, Del. Bob Marshall, R-Prince William, tackled foreclosures, coins, and gays in the Virginia National Guard, among other topics.
Now, he wants to save World War II-era battleship gun barrels from a planned scrap auction.
Marshall is urging Virginia’s congressional delegation to stop an auction of barrels in storage that he says could help the Navy refit the Battleship Iowa at a cost of $250 million, compared to spending $6 billion on a planned “Zumwalt class” land attack destroyer.
“There is no reason to sell these gun barrels for scrap,” said Marshall.
Iowa Class battleships were used during World War II and were removed from active service in 1992 following the Persian Gulf War.
The 15 remaining 3.6 million pound barrels, located at an army depot in Nevada, “are sitting in the desert where [some of them] have been for over 50 years,” Marshall wrote in a letter to the delegation. “There is essentially no cost to allow them to continue to remain in storage.”
“It would be a highly unwise decision to scrap these precision gun tubes when it is clear they could have other uses in the future,” he wrote.
