Oklahoma was the second of two Nevada-class battleships. Both were ordered in a naval appropriation act on 4 March 1911. She was the latest in a series of 22 battleships and seven armored cruisers ordered by the United States Navy between 1900 and 1911.
On 7 December 1941, Oklahoma was sunk by several torpedoes during the Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor.
Unlike most of the other battleships that were recovered following Pearl Harbor, Oklahoma was too damaged to return to duty. Her wreck was eventually stripped of her remaining armament and superstructure before being sold for scrap in 1946. The hulk sank in a storm while being towed from Oahu in Hawaii to a breakers yard in San Francisco Bay in 1947.
A day of infamy indeed.
ReplyDeleteThe Japanese couldn't have chosen a more insulting blow to America, with the sitting President FDR, a huge fan of the U.S. Navy and Churchill as the former First Lord of the Admiralty in Britain.
Talk about poking the hornets nest.
It was a brilliant strategic move, but they missed the carriers, and eventually, most of those sunk battleships were refloated and used at the end of the war to put an end to the Nipponese Empire. We poked 'em in the eye right back.
DeleteThe Japanese reaped a bitter harvest.
ReplyDeleteHer superstructure is missing in that picture, so it must have been taken when she was being salvaged. She fully capsized during the Pearl Harbor attack. She was badly damaged by the effort to right her; apparently bulkheads were pulled away from the hull and distorted. The salvage itself was an amazing feat of marine engineering. She was unique, the only one of the 'Standard' type battleships completed with a reciprocating steam engine; all the rest had turbines. A nice history is here:
ReplyDeletehttps://www.history.navy.mil/research/histories/ship-histories/danfs/o/oklahoma.html