WWII Battleship Has Day in the Sun in High-Tech War : Navy: The Wisconsin is proving that ear-splitting firepower may still have a place in modern-day conflict.

The images flicker on television screens throughout the giant battleship, with the sultry strains of jazz from the BBC as a soothing audio backdrop.

The camera glides over images of stark-still Iraqi troop bunkers, then pans across the Kuwaiti desert to an electronic warfare site. As the bass backs off and the saxophone picks up, the burned-out shells of armored personnel carriers come into view.

These are the victims of the Wisconsin’s 16-inch guns after four days of pounding along the coast of Kuwait: The spoils of a long-distance war, beamed from a drone-mounted video camera overhead to the comfortable ward rooms and dining rooms of the massive war machine floating quietly offshore in the Persian Gulf.

“Hot jazz and hot shots,” remarked Cmdr. R. J. Turner, a Vietnam combat veteran. “We are blowing up the beach and pretending that it’s a war.”

Since the Wisconsin’s deadly 1,900-pound shells began hurtling toward the Kuwaiti coast Thursday morning, Iraqi armor has moved its defensive positions farther back, and a Kuwaiti marina, believed used as a staging area for small boats attacking Saudi Arabia, has been left in ruins, chunks of boats left floating in its shallow waters.

In an era of high-tech, precision-guided missiles, the stately battleship with its thundering guns seems a relic of the past. But the aging Wisconsin and its companion in the Persian Gulf, the Missouri, are proving that sheer, ear-splitting naval firepower may still have a place in modern-day warfare.

“Anyone who has ever served aboard one of these ships understands their importance,” said Capt. David S. Bill, the Wisconsin’s commanding officer. “We just don’t build them like this anymore.”

Battleship commanders are taking credit for a marked decrease in Iraqi troop movements onshore and a rearward deployment of tanks outside the range of the big guns.

“When the USS Missouri came up here and initiated the gunfire support missions, there was a great deal of (troop) movement,” Bill said. “Since we have relieved her on station, there is a lot less movement, and I think that speaks very highly of the effectiveness of the battleship, being able to influence the battlefield. And I think that it has had a direct influence on how the Iraqis are operating in southern Kuwait.”

Barrages on Wednesday and Thursday pounded Iraqi artillery, electronic warfare and naval sites.

On Saturday, the Wisconsin, parked 10 miles off the coast of Kuwait, fired 18 shells toward Iraqi troops in underground bunkers, a barrage so powerful that even the ship did not escape unscathed.

The guns sent giant orange fireballs rushing toward shore with an unholy boom that rattled the throat, followed by the sound of ripping silk. The blasts left several of the ship’s radar screens broken and loosened light fixtures. An officer suffered a broken wrist when a gunshot’s concussion wave smashed a steel door into his hand.

An armor-piercing round is capable of blasting through 16 inches of steel or 20 inches of concrete at a distance of up to 23 miles.

But when ship-mounted Tomahawk missiles can maneuver to faraway targets with unnerving accuracy, and precision guided bombs can drop through the doors of enemy troop bunkers, critics have begun to question the usefulness of what they see as lumbering World War II-era battleships.

The New Jersey (decommissioned in Long Beach on Friday) was criticized for lobbing shells into the coastal mountains of Lebanon in 1983 to no particular effect. Military experts raise questions about the maneuverability of battleships when faced with ship-killing weapons, such as Iraq’s Exocet missiles, and when there seem to be no more great naval battles to be fought.

Bill said the Pentagon’s most recent budget submission contains no funds for operating battleships.

“I quit reading after I saw that,” he said.

The firings last week appeared to be hitting some onshore targets and driving others outside the range of the ship’s guns.

In the attack on the marina late Thursday night, initial rounds fell wide. But with the aid of infrared pictures from the Wisconsin’s “remotely piloted vehicle” aircraft, the ship’s gunners corrected their aim and dropped round after round inside the marina, damaging or destroying at least 15 boats.

In Saturday morning’s firing against Iraqi troop bunkers, it took several rounds for gunners to get their range.

Then, a steady stream of explosive rounds plowed through the middle of the Iraqi encampment. A few of the hits appeared to produce secondary fires; most seemed to thud into the dirt.

But with one-ton shells, the Wisconsin’s gunners point out, close is often good enough.

The ship’s weapons officer, Cmdr. Rodney L. Sams, seemed convinced.

“I would bet that a lot of those bunkers have collapsed,” he said in the ship’s ward room, as he watched video images from the remotely piloted craft.

A truck and later a large yacht were seen pulling away from a shore base.

“Right now, it looks to me like the potential targets have been reduced somewhat,” Bill said. “Because the Iraqis know that we are operating up here . . . they have pulled back to get outside range.”

Bill has a battery of statistics with which to sell the Wisconsin’s fire capability.

Take this: A nuclear-powered aircraft carrier can drop 225 tons of ordnance a day if its planes fly an average of three missions a day while the Wisconsin can fire 225 tons of projectiles in 30 minutes.

Or this: A ton of ordnance delivered by a carrier-based aircraft costs $12,000 compared with $1,600 per ton for the battleship.

But for Bill, there is more to it than that. There is the mystique of commanding a floating city that has been the dominant power on the seas for half a century.

“When you steam a battleship into a foreign harbor, and you drop hook, you have the absolute attention of everybody within sight. Whereas, you could put a dozen frigates in that same environment, and it would not create that same awesome perspective that a battleship does, just by its sheer presence.”

This article was compiled in part from combat pool reports, which were screened by military censors.