USS Nevada (BB-36)

There is no greater symbol of a country’s determination to defend its freedom than a warship. USS Nevada was named after the 36th state. Launched in 1914, Nevada was a leap forward in dreadnought technology. Every subsequent US battleship included triple gun turrets, oil in place of coal for fuel, geared steam turbines for greater range, and the “all or nothing” armor principle. These features made Nevada, alongside sister ship Oklahoma, the first US Navy “standard-type” battleships.

Nevada’s construction was authorized by an Act of Congress on March 4, 1911. The contract went to Fore River Shipbuilding Company on January 22, 1912 for a total of $5,895,000 and construction was originally to be 36 months.

Nevada had maximum armor over critical areas, such as magazines and engines, and none over less important places. This radical change became known as the “all or nothing” principle, which most major navies later adopted for their own battleships.

As the first second-generation battleship in the US Navy, Nevada was described as “revolutionary”. At the ship’s completion in 1916, The New York Times pronounced the new warship “the greatest [battleship] afloat” because she was so much larger than other contemporary American battleships.”

During the last months of World War I, Nevada was based in Bantry Bay, Ireland. Along with Utah and sister Oklahoma, the three were nicknamed the “Bantry Bay Squadron”. The three operated from the bay escorting large and valuable convoys bound for the British Isles to ensure no German heavy surface ships could slip past the British Grand Fleet and annihilate the merchant ships and their weak escorts of older cruisers. The war ended on November 11, 1918 with Nevada not getting a chance to engage an enemy during the war.

In December, Nevada, 10 battleships and 28 destroyers escorted the ocean liner George Washington with president Woodrow Wilson to the Paris Peace Conference in Brest, France.

Nevada and battleship Arizona, represented the U. S. at the Peruvian Centennial Exposition in July 1921. A year later in company with Maryland this time, Nevada returned to South America as an escort to the steamer Pan America with Secretary of State Charles Evans Hughes to attend the Centennial of Brazilian Independence.

Nevada took part in the US Fleet’s “goodwill cruise” to Australia and New Zealand, from July–September 1925. This demonstrated to allies and Japan that the US Navy had the ability to conduct transpacific operations and meet the Imperial Japanese Navy in their home waters, where both Japanese and American War Plans expected the “decisive battle” to be fought.

After the cruise, Nevada put into Norfolk Navy Yard to be modernized. Nevada then served in the Pacific Fleet for the next eleven years (1930-1941).

In World War II, she was one of the battleships trapped when the Japanese attacked Pearl Harbor. Nevada was the only battleship to get underway during the attack, making the ship “the only bright spot in an otherwise dismal and depressing morning” for the United States.

Aft of Arizona during the attack, Nevada was not moored alongside another battleship off Ford Island, and therefore was able to maneuver, unlike the other seven battleships. As Nevada’s gunners opened fire and her engineers started to raise steam, a single 18-inch torpedo exploded about 14 ft above the keel. Seconds later, the bomber that dropped the torpedo was shot down by Nevada’s gunners. The torpedo bulkhead held, but leaking joints caused flooding of port side compartments below the first platform deck and a list of 4–5°. Her damage control crew corrected the list by counter-flooding and Nevada got underway at 0840 with her gunners already having shot down four planes.

Heading down the channel toward the Navy Yard, Nevada became a prime target for Japanese dive bombers. The Japanese intended to sink her in the channel to block the harbor.

She was hit and near-missed repeatedly, causing more leaks, starting gasoline fires forward and other blazes in her superstructure and midships area. Now in serious trouble, Nevada was run aground on the Navy Yard side of the channel, just south of Ford Island.

The gasoline fires that flared up might have caused more critical damage if the main magazines had not been empty. For several days prior to the attack, all battleships had been replacing their standard-weight battery projectiles with a new heavier projectile. All of the older projectiles and powder charges had been removed from Nevada’s magazines.

Her old structure proved but watertight. The ship eventually slid off the ledge and sank to the harbor floor. There she was to remain for over two months. She was the first of Pearl Harbor’s many salvage projects. Of USS Nevada’s crew of nearly 1500, 50-60 officers and men were killed and 109 wounded during the Pearl Harbor raid.

Two more men died during salvage operations in February 1942 when they were overcome by hydrogen sulfide gas from decomposing paper and meat. The ship suffered a minimum of six bomb hits and one torpedo hit, but “it is possible that as many as ten bomb hits may have been received, as certain damaged areas [were] of sufficient size to indicate that they were struck by more than one bomb.”

On February 12, 1942, Nevada was refloated and underwent temporary repairs at Pearl Harbor so she could get to Puget Sound Navy Yard for major repairs and modernization. Nevada later served as a convoy escort in the Atlantic and as a fire-support ship in five amphibious assaults (the invasions of Attu, Normandy, Southern France, Iwo Jima, and Okinawa).

She was chosen as Rear Admiral Morton Deyo’s flagship for the Normandy operation. During the invasion, Nevada supported forces ashore from June 6–17, and again on June 25. During this time, she employed her guns against shore defenses on the Cherbourg Peninsula. Shells from her guns ranged as far as 20 miles inland in attempts to break up German concentrations and counterattacks, despite being straddled by barrage of counter-battery fire 27 times.

Nevada was later praised for her “incredibly accurate” fire in support of beleaguered troops, as some of the targets she hit were just 600 yds from the front line. Nevada was the only battleship present at both Pearl Harbor and the Normandy landings.

After D-Day, Nevada headed to Toulon for another amphibious assault, codenamed Operation Dragoon, to bombard shore targets in Southern France. Nevada supported this operation from August 15 to September 25, 1944, “dueling with “Big Willie”: a heavily reinforced fortress with guns that had a range of nearly 19 nautical miles and commanded every approach to the port of Toulon.” On the 23rd, a bombardment force headed by Nevada struck the “most damaging” blow to the fort during a 6.5-hour battle, which saw 354 salvos fired by Nevada. Toulon fell on the 25th.

In March 1945, Nevada joined the “Fire Support Force” off Okinawa as bombardment began prior to the invasion of Okinawa. During the invasion, she moved within 600 yds from shore to provide maximum firepower for the troops that were advancing.

Along with the force, Nevada shelled Japanese airfields, shore defenses, supply dumps, and troop concentrations. Dawn “came up like thunder” when seven kamikazes attacked the force while it was without air cover. One plane, hit by antiaircraft fire crashed onto the main deck of Nevada, killing 11 and wounding 49; knocking out both 14-inch guns in that turret and three 20 mm anti-aircraft weapons. Another two men were lost to fire from a shore battery on April 5. Though damaged by the suicide plane and artillery shell on April 5, Nevada remained in action off Okinawa until June 1945.

She spent the remaining months of World War II in the Western Pacific, preparing for the invasion of Japan. With the coming of peace, Nevada returned to Pearl Harbor.

Deemed too old for retention in the post-war fleet at 32⅓ years, she was assigned to serve as a target during the July 1946 atomic bomb tests at Bikini in the Marshall Islands (Operation Crossroads).

The ship was hit by the blast from atomic bomb Able, and was left heavily damaged and radioactive. Unfit for further service, Nevada was decommissioned on August 29, 1946 and sunk by naval gunfire practice on July 31, 1948.

In May 2020, it was announced that a joint expedition by Ocean Infinity and operations center of SEARCH Inc., discovered Nevada’s wreck at a depth of 15,400 feet off the coast of Hawaii and about 65 nautical miles southwest of Pearl Harbor. The wreck lies upside down. Nearby is a large debris field with the turrets and the bow and stern, portions of the bridge, sections of deck and superstructure, and one of four tanks, an M26 Pershing, placed on the deck for the atomic bomb tests.

One of Nevada’s Arizona guns is paired with a gun formerly on the Missouri at the Wesley Bolin Memorial Plaza just east of the Arizona State Capitol complex in downtown Phoenix, Arizona. It is part of a memorial representing the start and end of the Pacific War for the United States. A large model of the ship built for the 1970 film, Tora! Tora! Tora!, survives today in Los Angeles and often appears at local parades.

A hero’s ship, battered and bruised, albeit beautiful, possibly deserved a more fitting end. It was not just another ship. Instead, it lived up to its noble mission. She will be remembered as “the only bright spot in an otherwise dismal and depressing morning” and a ship who refused to end her days.