b'C H A P T E R 2T H E N A V A L P R O V I N G G R O U N DAlthough another war would bringl a rge Navy guns back to the oldProving Ground in the late 1960s, theNavy would no longer own the facili-t y. By that time, the original firingrange was dotted with laboratories andother buildings, so guns could nolonger be fired to the north and had tobe pointed south. A new federalagency had acquired the Navys desertproperty and was using this remoteregion of Idaho for an altogether dif-ferent kind of scientific proofing.INEEL 70-59From 1968 to 1970, during the Vietnam War, the Navy test-fired sixteen-inch guns from the battleship USSNew Jersey. The firing point, named the Naval Ordnance Test Facility, was south of the Experimental BreederReactor-I complex, and the target was the northern flank of Big Southern Butte. Sixteen-inch guns were theonly World War II-era naval weapons used during the Vietnam War. The Navy moved the old gantry crane(photo left) from its original location and used it again to unload guns brought from Pocatello by rail. Thepurpose in reworking the guns was to extend their range for use in clearing 200-yard-diameter landing zonesin the heavily canopied jungles of Vietnam.1 7'