US Marine Corps - The Black Vault

Ten Years of Big SbZp Gunnevy 35
years older, 15,000 tons less displacement, 150 feet shorter, three knots
slower, and mounted only eight 12-inch 45-caliber guns in her main battery.
But she was a real gunnery prize for an officer who had been a senior
lieutenant only a year.
Neither the Pennsylvania nor the Michigan lucked into battleship opera-
tion in the European Theater of war during World War I. The British
thought it prudent to add only coal burning American battleships to their
Home Fleet, because of their shortage of oil, and the Pennsylvania burned
oil. The Michigan, a coal burner, was just too old and too slow to be needed
or wanted. Instead, these two battleships trained and trained and trained
secondary battery gun crews to act as the Armed Guards of hundreds of
merchant ships and to man the guns on the recently converted, and far fewer,
regular transports of the Armed Services. The training of gun crews was
largely carried out in the Southern Drill Grounds off the entrance to Hampton
Roads and near Base 2 at Yorktown, Virginia, and off Base 10 at Port
Jefferson, New York, in Long Island Sound. This repetitive training entailed
taking green recruits by the thousands and teaching them to man, operate,
shoot and take care of a 3-, 4- or 5-inch gun.
In January 1917—eight and a half years out of the Naval Academy—
Richmond Kelly Turner put on the two stripes of a senior lieutenant. His
seniority dated from 29 August 1916, the date when the law introducing
promotions by selection into the upper ranks of the Line of the Navy became
effective. This law also markedly increased (by 20 percent) the number of
senior lieutenants authorized in our Navy.
World War I brought temporary promotion of Turner to lieutenant commander
in late December 1917 (dating from 15 October 1917) and just three
months after reporting in as Gunnery Officer of the Michigan. This welcome
step required the second of two upgrading in uniform stripes in one calendar
year.
GUNNERY AND MORE GUNNERY
Although Lieutenant Commander Turner was one of the very junior Gunnery
Officers in the Atlantic Fleet, this did not deter him from presenting,
via official channels to the Chief of Bureau of Ordnance, his ideas on the
improvement of the fire control apparatus for the big guns of the ships of
the Fleet.