The Ships of Battlegroup: United States Arkansas (BB-33)

Displacement	26,000 tons	Belt Armor	11 inches
Overall Length	562 feet	Deck Armor	4–5 inches
Beam	93 feet	Main Turret Armor	12 inches
Speed	20.5 knots	Main Guns	12 × 12″

Laid down on January 25, 1910, launched on January 14, 1911 and commissioned on September 17, 1912, the ship carried a main armament of twelve 12 inch main guns mounted two per turret; two centerline superfiring forward, two centerline superfiring aft and two centerline superfiring amidships which could be fired to both sides and, with sufficient range, aft. The design for this class had the most centerline turrets ever mounted on a United States battleship to compensate for the fact that the new 14 inch gun and a practical three-gun turret were not ready for deployment when this class was built. Arkansas was half of the two-ship Wyoming class and both had coal-fired turbine engines.

All United States dreadnought battleships were named after states, a custom that went back to the naming of wooden ships of the line during the age of sail. Also, all battleships were assigned a hull number (from 1920) that was normally displayed on the hull. During World War One, Arkansas, along with Delaware, Florida, New York, Texas and Wyoming served with the British Grand Fleet in 1918. Between the wars, BB-33 served with both the Atlantic and the Pacific Fleets, with time out for an overhaul and updating from 1925–1926 that replaced the original boilers with modern oil-fired units, increased the deck armor and added torpedo bulges. During the “tween wars” period she was used nine times for summer cruises by Annapolis Naval Academy midshipmen. Her sister ship Wyoming was, in accordance with the London Treaty, converted to a training ship, in which role she served through the Second World War.

By July 1941, a battleship with 12 inch guns was positively senile and Arkansas was slated for rapid replacement by the fast, new 16 inch gun battleships then building. Arkansas was the oldest battleship in the United States Navy when she supported the unopposed U. S. M. C. landing in Iceland. After the United States entered World War Two, the old girl went to the dockyards not be scrapped but for a quick update at Norfolk Navy Yard from March 6 through July 26, 1942. She later escorted eleven Atlantic convoys, provided fire support in the Normandy area from June 6, 1944 and then bombarded the French Riviera in support of the invasion of southern France a few months later. After a complete refit in Boston, Arkansas passed through the Panama Canal into the Pacific and participated in the bombardments of Iwo Jima and Okinawa in 1945.

After decommissioning, Arkansas was selected as a target ship for the atom bomb tests at Bikini Atoll. She survived the first (“Able”) bomb with repairable damage but was thrown into the air in a column of water and debris and capsized by the second (“Baker”) underwater blast, which was detonated only 250 yards from her anchorage. The other American battleships, Nevada, New York and Pennsylvania, were all damaged but not sunk and towed off and expended later as conventional targets. Since the radiation dissipated, the shallow but shark-filled waters are still visited by scuba divers to observe the hulks of the battleships Nagato, Arkansas, the aircraft carrier Saratoga (CV-3), the German heavy cruiser Prinz Eugene and a host of smaller vessels in a unique underwater museum.

For another World War II ship with 12 inch guns, see: Guam .

For a further discussion of what happened to the battleships of World War One, see the Introduction to these articles.