Sitting Duck?

"I 've had a strange feeling that I'm back on the set filming Hellcats of the Navy. " Thus quipped Ronald Reagan last week at a scene reminiscent both of old-time Hollywood and of World War II: the recommissioning at California's Long Beach Naval Ship yard of the battleship New Jersey, launched in 1942 and now demothballed for a third time.

The venerable battlewagon is still awesome. Her 16-in. guns can hurl shells that weigh 2,700 Ibs. each (the weight of a Chevrolet) as far as 23 miles. She has been fitted with Toma hawk and Harpoon missiles, some with nuclear warheads; the Toma hawk can hit targets 1 ,500 miles away.

The ship will operate with an aircraft carrier battle group, including attack submarines, to defend itself against air and undersea assault.

Critics joke that the battleship is so vulnerable it should be renamed the U.S.S. Sitting Duck. The Navy insists that more than ten hits by nonnuclear Soviet cruise missiles would be required to put it out of action. Reagan, noting that the New Jersey had cost $326 million to demothball, called the ship "a shining example" of "the maximum cost-effective application of high technology to existing assets."