Temper, Temper: The Day North Korea Hit a U.S. Battleship and Instantl

By the spring of 1953, the Korean War had ossified into a bloody stalemate near the 38th parallel. North Korea was holding on thanks to Chinese boots on the ground and Soviet planes in the air. At sea, though, the math was even uglier. The Korean People’s Navy was a fleet of patrol boats, torpedo skiffs, and a few aging submarines — pitted against the largest two-ocean navy on Earth.

On March 15, 1953, one North Korean shore battery decided to even the odds. They picked a fight with the wrong ship.

Meet the Big Wisky

The USS Wisconsin (BB-64) was an Iowa-class battleship — the kind of warship that turns coastlines into parking lots. After World War II she had been mothballed in the Atlantic Reserve Fleet, but the Korean War yanked her back into service. By November 1951 she was off the Korean coast, lobbing shells at:

Enemy troop concentrations
Artillery positions
Supply trains
Rail tunnels (yes, the actual tunnels)

For nearly two years the Wisconsin operated almost completely unmolested. Smugglers gave her a wide berth. Gunboats stayed in port. Then a North Korean gun crew on the eastern coast decided to test their luck.

One Lucky Shot

While the Wisconsin was hammering shore targets, a Soviet-made 152mm artillery shell came screaming back the other way. It slammed into her port side amidships and managed to do real damage — at least by battleship standards:

Shattered a section of her teak deck planking
Destroyed the splinter shield on a 40mm gun mount
Wounded three American sailors

No one on board was killed. The Wisconsin’s armor belt — built to shrug off Yamato-class fire — barely noticed. But the captain noticed. The crew noticed. And the response was not subtle.

The Reply: Nine Shells, 2,700 Pounds Each

The Wisconsin swung all three of her 16-inch Mark-7 main turrets toward the offending battery and fired a full nine-gun broadside. Each shell weighed 2,700 pounds. That is roughly the weight of a Honda Civic — flying at supersonic speed — landing on a gun pit.

A full Iowa-class broadside has been described as capable of sinking an armored aircraft carrier. The odds that the North Korean gun crew survived their moment of inspiration sit somewhere between slim and atomized.

“Temper Temper”

Watching the carnage from nearby, the destroyer USS Buck reportedly signaled the Wisconsin a now-legendary message: “Temper Temper.” It is the kind of dry, understated comment that only a Navy crew watching a battleship melt a hillside could come up with.

What Happened Next

For the rest of the Korean War, neither North Korean nor Chinese forces took another shot at the Big Wisky. Apparently word got around. The Wisconsin finished out the war, eventually became a training ship for Naval Academy midshipmen, and saw action again in Operation Desert Storm decades later — this time launching Tomahawks instead of shells.

Today she sits as a museum ship in Norfolk, Virginia. You can walk her decks, peer down the muzzles of those 16-inch guns, and reflect on a simple piece of wisdom from 1953: if you must pick a fight, do not pick it with an Iowa-class battleship.