USS Arizona (BB-39), 1916-1941
USS Arizona, a 31,400 ton Pennsylvania class battleship built at the New York Navy Yard, Brooklyn, New York, was commissioned in October 1916. After shakedown off the east coast and in the Caribbean, she operated out of Norfolk, Virginia, until November 1918, when she made a brief cruise to France. She made a second cruise to European waters in April-June 1919, proceeding as Far East as Turkey. During much of 1920-21, the battleship was in the western Atlantic and Caribbean areas, but paid two visits to Peru in 1921 in her first excursions into the Pacific. From August 1921 until 1929, Arizona was based in Southern California, making occasional cruises to the Caribbean or Hawaii during major U.S. Fleet exercises.
In 1929-31, Arizona was modernized at the Norfolk Navy Yard, Portsmouth, Virginia, emerging with a radically altered appearance and major improvements to her armament and protection. In March 1931, she transported President Herbert Hoover and his party to Puerto Rico and the Virgin Islands. In August of that year, Arizona returned to the Pacific, continuing her operations with the Battle Fleet during the next decade. From 1940, she, and the other Pacific Fleet battleships were based at Pearl Harbor on the orders of President Franklin D. Roosevelt.
Arizona was moored in Pearl Harbor's "Battleship Row" on the morning of 7 December 1941, when Imperial Naval Forces of Japan attacked. The Arizona was the most heavily damaged of all the vessels in Battleship Row, suffering three near misses. But the fourth was an 800-kg bomb dropped by a high-altitude Kate bomber. That bomb struck her starboard of turret two and then penetrated her armor deck. It detonated below decks within a 14-inch powder magazine. The resulting massive explosion broke the ship in two forward of turret one; this collapsed her forecastle decks which then created such a cavity that her forward turrets and conning tower fell thirty feet into her hull. The Arizona was a total loss.
The Arizona in the recovery and salvage stage after the attack was never seriously considered a viable candidate for salvage. She had died that Sunday morning with over 1177 sailors and marines who are entombed within her hull. In the following months, much of her armament and topside structure was removed, with the two after triple 14" gun turrets being transferred to the Army for emplacement as coast defense batteries on Oahu.
The wrecked battleship's hull remained where she sank, a tomb for many of those lost with her. In 1950, she began to be used as a site for memorial ceremonies. In the early 1960s a handsome memorial structure was constructed over her amidships. This USS Arizona Memorial, operated by the National Park Service, is a permanent shrine to those Americans who lost their lives in the attack on Pearl Harbor and in the great Pacific War that began on 7 December 1941 on a Sunday morning just a few minutes before 0800.
