USS Alabama, hull number BB-60, is a retired battleship. She was the fourth and final member of the of fast battleships built for the United States Navy in the 1940s during World War II. The first American battleships designed after the Washington Treaty system began to break down in the mid-1930s, they took advantage of an escalator clause that allowed increasing the main battery to guns, but Congressional refusal to authorize larger battleships kept their displacement close to the Washington limit of . A requirement to be armored against the same caliber of guns as they carried, combined with the displacement restriction, resulted in cramped ships. Overcrowding was exacerbated by wartime modifications that considerably strengthened their anti-aircraft batteries and significantly increased their crews.
After entering service, Alabama was briefly deployed to strengthen the British Home Fleet, tasked with protecting convoys to the Soviet Union. In 1943, she was transferred to the Pacific for operations against Japan; the first of these was the Gilbert and Marshall Islands campaign that began in November that year. While operating in the Pacific, she served primarily as an escort for the fast carrier task force to protect the aircraft carriers from surface and air attacks. She also frequently bombarded Japanese positions in support of amphibious assaults. She took part in the Mariana and Palau Islands campaign in June–September and the Philippines campaign in October–December. After a refit in early 1945, she returned to the fleet for operations during the Battle of Okinawa and the series of attacks on the Japanese mainland in July and August, including several bombardments of coastal industrial targets.
Alabama assisted in Operation Magic Carpet after the war, carrying some 700 men home from the former war zone. She was decommissioned in 1947 and assigned to the Pacific Reserve Fleet, where she remained until 1962 when she was stricken from the Naval Vessel Register. A campaign to save the ship from the breakers' yard succeeded in raising the necessary funds, and Alabama was preserved as a museum ship in Mobile Bay, Alabama at Battleship Memorial Park.
Design
The was ordered in the context of global naval rearmament during the breakdown of the Washington treaty system that had controlled battleships construction during the 1920s and early 1930s. Under the Washington and London treaties, so-called treaty battleships were limited to a standard displacement of and a main battery of guns. In 1936, following Japan's decision to abandon the treaty system, the United States Navy decided to invoke the "escalator clause" in the Second London treaty that allowed displacements to rise to and armament to increase to guns. Congressional objections to increasing the size of the new ships forced the design staff to keep displacement as close to 35,000 LT as possible while incorporating the larger guns and armor sufficient to defeat guns of the same caliber.
Alabama is long overall and has a beam of and a draft of . She displaced as designed and up to at full combat load. The ship was powered by four General Electric steam turbines, each driving one propeller shaft, using steam provided by eight oil-fired Babcock & Wilcox boilers. Rated at , the turbines were intended to give a top speed of . The ship had a cruising range of at a speed of . She carried three Vought OS2U Kingfisher floatplanes for aerial reconnaissance, which were launched by a pair of aircraft catapults on her fantail. Her peacetime crew numbered 1,793 officers and enlisted men, but during the war the crew swelled to 2,500.
The ship was armed with a main battery of nine 16"/45 caliber Mark 6 guns in three triple-gun turrets on the centerline, two of which were placed in a superfiring pair forward, with the third aft. The secondary battery consisted of twenty 5-inch /38 caliber dual-purpose guns mounted in twin turrets clustered amidships, five turrets on either side. As designed, the ship was equipped with an anti-aircraft battery of twelve guns and twelve .50-caliber (12.7 mm) M2 Browning machine guns, but she was completed with a battery of six quadruple Bofors guns in place of the 1.1 in guns and thirty-five Oerlikon autocannon in single mounts instead of the .50-cal. guns.
The main armored belt is thick, while the main armored deck is up to thick. The main battery gun turrets have thick faces, and they are mounted atop barbettes that are thick. The conning tower has thick sides.
Modifications Alabama received a series of modifications through her wartime career, consisting primarily of additions to the anti-aircraft battery and various types of radar sets. The first addition was the installation of SC air search radar in 1941, fitted in the foremast, which was later replaced with an SK type set. At the same time, an SG surface search radar was installed on the forward superstructure; a second SG set was added to the main mast after experiences during the Guadalcanal campaign in 1942. In 1943, she received a Mark 3 fire-control radar, mounted on her conning tower to assist in the direction of her main battery guns. The Mark 3 was quickly replaced with more modern Mark 8 fire-control radar, and Mark 4 radars for the secondary battery guns. She later received Mark 12/22 sets in place of the Mark 4s. Alabama also received a TDY jammer. In 1945, her traditional spotting scopes were replaced with Mark 27 microwave radar sets.
The ship's light anti-aircraft battery was gradually expanded. Four more 40 mm quadruple mounts were allocated to the ship in late 1942, but by the time she underwent her refit in November 1943, the allotted armament had been increased to twelve quadruple mounts. Two more were to be added to the forecastle in 1945, but experience with other ships demonstrated these to be excessively wet in most sea conditions and thus unusable, so they were never installed aboard Alabama. In May 1943, she had another eight 20 mm guns installed, bringing the total to fifty-three of the guns. By 1945, the ship's 20 mm battery had grown to fifty-six guns, all in single mounts. She was slated to have these exchanged for forty twin mounts, but the work was not done before the war ended and she was removed from service.
Service history
Construction and Atlantic operations
The keel for Alabama was laid down on 1 February 1940 at the Norfolk Navy Yard. She was launched on 16 February 1942; Crane Ship No. 1 (ex-) assisted with the installation of the ship's heavy armor and armament. She was commissioned just six months later on 16 August. Fitting-out work then commenced, and on 11 November she began her shakedown cruise in the Chesapeake Bay. She then began initial training to prepare the ship's crew for wartime service, first out of Casco Bay, Maine. On 11 January 1943, Alabama returned to Chesapeake Bay for further training before moving to Norfolk. She was then assigned to Task Group (TG) 22.2 and sent back to Casco Bay on 13 February for tactical training.
Alabamas first deployment came in April with the temporary assignment to the British Home Fleet to reinforce the Allied naval forces available to escort the Arctic convoys to the Soviet Union. At the time, the British had sent several capital ships to the Mediterranean Sea to support the Allied invasion of Sicily, stripping away forces necessary to counter German naval strength in Norway, most significantly the battleship . Accordingly, Alabama and her sister ship got underway on 2 April as part of Task Force (TF) 22. Screened by five destroyers, the two battleships steamed to the Orkney Islands by way of Little Placentia Sound and Naval Station Argentia, Newfoundland, arriving in the main British naval base at Scapa Flow on 19 May. There, they were organized as TF 61, Home Fleet, and the ships began thorough training to familiarize the American ships with their British counterparts for joint operations. TF 61 was commanded by Rear Admiral Olaf M. Hustvedt; over the course of the next three months, they frequently operated with the battleships and .
Alabama, South Dakota, and several British units covered an operation to reinforce the island of Spitzbergen in the Arctic Ocean in early June. The following month, Alabama took part in Operation Governor, a demonstration to distract German attention during the Sicily invasion. The Allies also hoped to lure out Tirpitz to sink her, but the Germans took no notice of the ships and remained in port. On 1 August, Alabama and South Dakota were detached to return to the United States; they departed immediately and arrived in Norfolk on 9 August, where Alabama underwent an overhaul in preparation for operations against Japanese forces in the Pacific Theater. Alabama emerged from the shipyard on 20 August and began the voyage to the Pacific by way of the Panama Canal, which she transited on 25 August. She reached Efate in the New Hebrides on 14 September.
Pacific operations
Gilbert and Marshall Islands campaign
On arriving in the south Pacific, Alabama embarked on an extensive training program that lasted for a month and a half to prepare the battleship to operate with the fast carrier task force. She then steamed to Fiji on 7 November before departing four days later to support the Gilbert and Marshall Islands campaign, which began with the invasion of Tarawa on 20 November. Alabama escorted the aircraft carriers while they struck Japanese airfields on nearby islands in the Marshalls to neutralize their ability to interfere with the landing. She then supported the landing on Betio in the Tarawa Atoll on 20 November, followed by the landing at Makin. Alabama twice engaged Japanese aircraft that approached the fleet on the night of 26 November.
Alabama and five other fast battleships bombarded Nauru on 8 December, which the Japanese used as a source of phosphate. The destroyer , which had been hit by Japanese artillery fire, came alongside Alabama and transferred three wounded men to the battleship. The ships then escorted the carriers and back to Efate, which they reached on 12 December. Alabama got underway on 5 January 1944 for Pearl Harbor, arriving on 12 January for maintenance that included replacing one of her propellers. She arrived in Funafuti in the Ellice Islands on 21 January, where she joined the fleet for the next operation in the campaign. She was assigned to Task Group (TG) 58.2, which sortied on 25 January to begin Operation Flintlock, the invasion of Kwajalein. Alabama, South Dakota, and the battleship shelled the island of Roi-Namur over the course of 29 and 30 January, targeting defensive positions, airfields, and other facilities. For the remainder of the campaign, she patrolled to the north of Kwajalein to guard against a possible Japanese counterattack that did not materialize.
Over the next two months, the fast carrier task force embarked on a series of raids on Japanese-held islands in the central Pacific to prepare for the next major offensive. The ships of TG 58.2 sortied on 12 February to participate in Operation Hailstone, a major raid on the island of Truk, which had been the primary staging area for the Japanese fleet in the central Pacific. Alabama escorted the carriers that struck the island over the course of 16–17 February, inflicting heavy damage to the Japanese forces and infrastructure there. The fleet then continued on to raid Japanese bases on Saipan, Tinian, and Guam. During a Japanese air attack on the fleet on 21 February, Alabamas No. 9 5-inch turret accidentally fired into the No. 5 mount, killing five and wounding eleven men. That day, Alabama took part in a sweep to the southeast of Saipan to search for Japanese vessels that might be in the area. Having found none, the fleet steamed to Majuro to replenish fuel and ammunition. While there, she served as the flagship of Vice Admiral Marc Mitscher, the commander of the fast carrier task force, from 3 to 8 March.