USS Pennsylvania, hull number BB-38, was the lead ship of the of super-dreadnought battleships built for the United States Navy in the 1910s. The Pennsylvanias were part of the standard-type battleship series, and marked an incremental improvement over the preceding , carrying an extra pair of guns for a total of twelve guns. Named for the Commonwealth of Pennsylvania, she was laid down at the Newport News Shipbuilding and Drydock Company in October 1913, was launched in March 1915, and was commissioned in June 1916. Equipped with an oil-burning propulsion system, Pennsylvania was not sent to European waters during World War I, since the necessary fuel oil was not as readily available as coal. Instead, she remained in American waters and took part in training exercises; in 1918, she escorted President Woodrow Wilson to France to take part in peace negotiations.
During the 1920s and 1930s, Pennsylvania served as the flagship of first the Atlantic Fleet, and after it was merged with the Pacific Fleet in 1921, the Battle Fleet. For the majority of this period, the ship was stationed in California, based in San Pedro. Pennsylvania was occupied with a peacetime routine of training exercises (including the annual Fleet problems), port visits, and foreign cruises, including a visit to Australia in 1925. The ship was modernized in 1929–1931. The ship was present in Pearl Harbor on the morning of 7 December 1941; she was in drydock with a pair of destroyers when the Japanese launched their surprise attack on the port. She suffered relatively minor damage in the attack, being protected from torpedoes by the drydock. While repairs were effected, the ship received a modernized anti-aircraft battery to prepare her for operations in the Pacific War.
Pennsylvania joined the fleet in a series of amphibious operations, primarily tasked with providing gunfire support. The first of these, the Aleutian Islands Campaign, took place in mid-1943, and was followed by an attack on Makin later that year. During 1944, she supported the landings on Kwajalein and Eniwetok in the Marshall Islands and the Mariana and Palau Islands campaign, including the Battles of Saipan, Guam, Peleliu, and Battle of Angaur. During the Philippines campaign, in addition to her typical shore bombardment duties, she took part in the Battle of Surigao Strait, though due to her inadequate radar, she was unable to locate a target and did not fire. During the Battle of Okinawa, she was torpedoed by a Japanese torpedo bomber and badly damaged, forcing her to withdraw for repairs days before the end of the war.
Allocated to the target fleet for the Operation Crossroads nuclear tests in 1946, Pennsylvania was repaired only enough to allow her to make the voyage to the test site, Bikini Atoll. She survived both blasts, but was badly contaminated with radioactive fallout from the second test, and so was towed to Kwajalein, where she was studied for the next year and a half. The ship was ultimately scuttled in deep water off the atoll in February 1948.
Description
Part of the standard-type battleship series, the Pennsylvania-class ships were significantly larger than their predecessors, the . Pennsylvania had an overall length of , a beam of (at the waterline), and a draft of at deep load. This was longer than the older ships. She displaced at standard and at deep load, over more than the older ships. The ship had a metacentric height of at deep load.
The ship had four direct-drive Curtis steam turbine sets, each of which drove a propeller in diameter. They were powered by twelve Babcock & Wilcox water-tube boilers. The turbines were designed to produce a total of , for a designed speed of . She was designed to normally carry of fuel oil, but had a maximum capacity of . At full capacity, the ship could steam at a speed of for an estimated with a clean bottom. She had four turbo generators.
Pennsylvania carried twelve 45-caliber guns in triple gun turrets. The turrets were numbered from I to IV from front to rear. The guns could not elevate independently and were limited to a maximum elevation of +15° which gave them a maximum range of . The ship carried 100 shells for each gun. Defense against torpedo boats was provided by twenty-two 51-caliber guns mounted in individual casemates in the sides of the ship's hull. Positioned as they were they proved vulnerable to sea spray and could not be worked in heavy seas. At an elevation of 15°, they had a maximum range of . Each gun was provided with 230 rounds of ammunition. The ship mounted four 50-caliber three-inch guns for anti-aircraft defense, although only two were fitted when completed. The other pair were added shortly afterward on top of Turret III. Pennsylvania also mounted two torpedo tubes submerged, one on each broadside, and carried 24 torpedoes for them.
The Pennsylvania-class design continued the all-or-nothing principle of armoring only the most important areas of the ship begun in the Nevada class. The waterline armor belt of Krupp armor measured thick and covered only the ship's machinery spaces and magazines. It had a total height of , of which was below the waterline; beginning below the waterline, the belt tapered to its minimum thickness of . The transverse bulkheads at each end of the ship ranged from 13 to 8 inches in thickness. The faces of the gun turrets were thick while the sides were thick and the turret roofs were protected by of armor. The armor of the barbettes was thick. The conning tower was protected by of armor and had a roof eight inches thick.
The main armor deck was three plates thick with a total thickness of ; over the steering gear the armor increased to in two plates. Beneath it was the splinter deck that ranged from in thickness. The boiler uptakes were protected by a conical mantlet that ranged from in thickness. A three-inch torpedo bulkhead was placed inboard from the ship's side and the ship was provided with a complete double bottom. Testing in mid-1914 revealed that this system could withstand of TNT.
Service history Construction and World War I
The keel for Pennsylvania was laid down on 27 October 1913 at the Newport News Shipbuilding and Dry Dock Company of Newport News, Virginia. Her completed hull was launched on 16 March 1915, thereafter beginning fitting-out. Work on the ship finished in mid-1916, and she was commissioned on 12 June under the command of Captain Henry B. Wilson. The ship was assigned to the Atlantic Fleet and then completed final fitting out from 1 to 20 July. Pennsylvania then began sea trials in 20 July, steaming first to the southern drill grounds off the Virginia Capes and then north to the coast of New England. Rear Admiral Austin M. Knight and officers from the Naval War College came aboard on 21 August to observe fleet training exercises. Three days later, the ship was visited by Franklin Delano Roosevelt, then the Assistant Secretary of the Navy.
Rear Admiral Henry T. Mayo transferred to Pennsylvania on 12 October, making her the flagship of the Atlantic Fleet. At the end of the year, she went into drydock at the New York Navy Yard for maintenance. After emerging from the shipyard in January 1917, she steamed south to join fleet exercises in the Caribbean Sea, during which she stopped in: Culebra, Puerto Rico; Santo Domingo, Dominican Republic; and Port-au-Prince, Haiti. While in Port-au-Prince, Pennsylvania again hosted Roosevelt, who met with the president of Haiti aboard the ship. The battleship arrived back in Yorktown, Virginia on 6 April, the same day the United States declared war on Germany, bringing the country into World War I. Since Pennsylvania was oil-fired, she did not join the ships of Battleship Division Nine, as the British had asked for coal-burning battleships to reinforce the Grand Fleet. As a result, she stayed in American waters and saw no action during the war.
In August, Pennsylvania took part in a naval review for President Woodrow Wilson. Foreign naval officers visited the ship in September, including the Japanese Vice Admiral Isamu Takeshita and the Russian Vice Admiral Alexander Kolchak. For the rest of the year and into 1918, Pennsylvania was kept in a state of readiness through fleet exercises and gunnery training in Chesapeake Bay and Long Island Sound. She was preparing for night battle training on 11 November 1918, when the Armistice with Germany came into effect, ending the fighting. She thereafter returned for another stint in the New York Navy Yard for maintenance that was completed on 21 November. She began the voyage to Brest, France, on 2 December by way of Tomkinsville, New York, in company with the transport ship that carried Wilson to France to take part in the peace negotiations; they were escorted by ten destroyers. The ships arrived on 13 December and the next day, Pennsylvania began the trip back to New York with Battleship Divisions Nine and Six. The battleships reached their destination on 26 December, where they took part in victory celebrations.
Inter-war period 1919–1924
Pennsylvania and the rest of the Atlantic Fleet departed on 19 February, bound for the Caribbean for another round of exercises in Cuban waters. The ship arrived back in New York on 14 April, and while there on 30 June, Mayo was replaced by Vice Admiral Henry Wilson. On 8 July at Tomkinsville, a delegation consisting of: Vice President Thomas R. Marshall; Josephus Daniels, the Secretary of the Navy; Carter Glass, the Secretary of the Treasury; William B. Wilson, the Secretary of Labor; Newton D. Baker, the Secretary of War; Franklin K. Lane, the Secretary of the Interior; and Senator Champ Clark came aboard the ship for a cruise back to New York. The fleet conducted another set of maneuvers in the Caribbean from 7 January to April 1920, Pennsylvania returning to her berth in New York on 26 April. Training exercises in the area followed, and on 17 July she received the hull number BB-38.
On 17 January 1921, Pennsylvania left New York, passed through the Panama Canal to Balboa, Panama, where she joined the Pacific Fleet, which together with elements of the Atlantic Fleet was re-designated as the Battle Fleet, with Pennsylvania as its flagship. On 21 January, the fleet left Balboa and steamed south to Callao, Peru, where they arrived ten days later. The ships then steamed north back to Balboa on 2 February, arriving on 14 February. Pennsylvania crossed back through the canal to take part in maneuvers off Cuba and on 28 April she arrived in Hampton Roads, Virginia, where President Warren G. Harding, Edwin Denby, the Secretary of the Navy, Theodore Roosevelt Jr., the Assistant Secretary of the Navy, and Admiral Robert Coontz, the Chief of Naval Operations (CNO), came aboard the ship. Further training was held from 12 to 21 July in the Caribbean, after which she returned to New York. On 30 July, she proceeded on to Plymouth, Massachusetts for a visit that lasted until 2 August. Anothery drydock period in New York lasted from 5 to 20 August.