USS Tennessee (BB-43)

USS ''Tennessee'' (BB-43) was the lead ship of the of dreadnought battleships built for the United States Navy in the 1910s. The ''Tennessee'' class was part of the standard series of twelve battleships built in the 1910s and 1920s, and were developments of the preceding . They were armed with a battery of twelve guns in four three-gun turrets. ''Tennessee'' served in the Pacific Fleet for duration of her peacetime career. She spent the 1920s and 1930s participating in routine fleet training exercises, including the annual Fleet Problems, and cruises around the Americas and further abroad, such as a goodwill visit to Australia and New Zealand in 1925.

''Tennessee'' was moored in Battleship Row when the Japanese attacked Pearl Harbor on 7 December 1941, which brought the United States into World War II. She was not seriously damaged, and after being repaired she operated off the West Coast of the US in 1942. In 1943, ''Tennessee'' and many of the older battleships were thoroughly rebuilt to prepare them for operations in the Pacific War and in June–August, she took part in the Aleutian Islands Campaign, providing gunfire support to troops fighting to retake the islands. The Gilbert and Marshall Islands campaign followed from November 1943 to February 1944, including the Battles of Tarawa, Kwajalein, and Eniwetok. In March, she raided Kavieng to distract Japanese forces during the landing on Emirau, and from June through September, she fought in the Mariana and Palau Islands campaign, bombarding Japanese forces during the Battles of Saipan, Guam, Tinian, and Anguar.

The Philippines campaign followed in September, during which the ship operated as part of the bombardment group at the Battle of Leyte. The Japanese launched a major naval counterattack that resulted in the Battle of Leyte Gulf, a series of four naval engagements. During the Battle of Surigao Strait, ''Tennessee'' formed part of the US line of battle that defeated a Japanese squadron; this was the last battleship engagement in history. ''Tennessee'' shelled Japanese forces during the Battle of Iwo Jima in February 1945 and the Battle of Okinawa from March to June. During the latter action, she was hit by a kamikaze but was not seriously damaged. In the final months of the war, she operated primarily in the East China Sea, and after Japan's surrender in August, she participated in the occupation of Japan before returning to the US late in the year. In the postwar reduction of naval forces, ''Tennessee'' was placed in the reserve fleet in 1946 and retained, out of service, until 1959, when the Navy decided to discard her. The ship was sold to Bethlehem Steel in July and broken up for scrap.

Design

The two ''Tennessee''-class battleships were authorized on 3 March 1915, and they were in most respects repeats of the earlier s, the primary differences being enlarged bridges, greater elevation for the main battery turrets, and relocation of the secondary battery to the upper deck.

''Tennessee'' was long overall and had a beam of and a draft of . She displaced as designed and up to at full combat load. The ship was powered by four-shaft General Electric turbo-electric transmission and eight oil-fired Babcock & Wilcox boilers rated at , generating a top speed of . The ship had a cruising range of at a speed of . Her crew numbered 57 officers and 1,026 enlisted men. As built, she was fitted with two lattice masts with spotting tops for the main gun battery.

The ship was armed with a main battery of twelve /50 caliber guns/50 caliber refers to the length of the gun in terms of caliber. The length of a /50 caliber gun is 50 times its bore diameter. in four, three-gun turrets on the centerline, placed in two superfiring pairs forward and aft of the superstructure. Unlike earlier American battleships with triple turrets, these mounts allowed each barrel to elevate independently. Since ''Tennessee'' had been completed after the Battle of Jutland, which demonstrated the value of very long-range fire, her main battery turrets were modified while still under construction to allow elevation to 30 degrees. The secondary battery consisted of fourteen /51 caliber guns mounted in individual casemates clustered in the superstructure amidships. Initially, the ship was to have been fitted with twenty-two of the guns, but experiences in the North Sea during World War I demonstrated that the additional guns, which would have been placed in the hull, would have been unusable in anything but calm seas. As a result, the casemates were plated over to prevent flooding. The secondary battery was augmented with four /50 caliber guns. In addition to her gun armament, ''Tennessee'' was also fitted with two torpedo tubes, mounted submerged in the hull, one on each broadside.

''Tennessee''s main armored belt was thick, while the main armored deck was up to thick. The main battery gun turrets had thick faces on barbettes. Her conning tower had thick sides.

Service history

Construction – 1941

The keel for ''Tennessee'' was laid down on 14 May 1917 at the New York Naval Shipyard; her completed hull was launched on 30 April 1919. Fitting-out work then commenced, and on 3 June 1920, the completed ship was commissioned into the fleet. Captain Richard H. Leigh served as the ship's first commanding officer. ''Tennessee'' then began sea trials in Long Island Sound, which lasted from 15 to 23 October. On 30 October, while moored in New York, one of her electric generators exploded and destroyed the turbine, wounding two men. Repair work was completed and problems with her propulsion system that were identified during trials were corrected, and on 26 February 1921, ''Tennessee'' got underway for further trials off Guantanamo Bay, Cuba. She then steamed north, headed for Hampton Roads, Virginia, arriving on 19 March. She proceeded to Dahlgren, Virginia for shooting training to calibrate her guns. Maintenance in Boston followed, and two of her 5-inch guns were removed. before the ship moved to Rockland, Maine for full-power trials. With her working up now complete, she stopped in New York before steaming south, transiting the Panama Canal, and joining the Battleship Force, Pacific Fleet, in San Pedro, Los Angeles on 17 June.

Throughout the 1920s and 1930s, the ships of the Pacific Fleet (re-designated as the Battle Fleet in 1922 and again as the Battle Force in 1931) conducted a routine of training exercises, the annual Fleet Problems, and periodic maintenance. The Fleet Problems began in 1923 and typically involved most major units of the US Navy and involved a variety of tactical and strategic war games, and they were conducted in many different locations, including in the Caribbean Sea, the area around the Panama Canal Zone, the Pacific, and the Atlantic. In early 1922, she took part in fleet maneuvers in the Caribbean that saw the Pacific and Atlantic Fleets combine for large-scale training exercises. The maneuvers included elements of the fleets simulating attacks and defenses of the Canal Zone, Puerto Rico, and Guantanamo Bay Naval Base. The Pacific Fleet returned home in April. ''Tennessee'' placed first in 1922 and 1923 for accurate shooting among units of the Battle Fleet, and she earned the Battle "E" award in 1923 and 1924; during this period, her commander was Captain Luke McNamee.

The Fleet Problems laid the ground work for the US Navy's campaigns during the Pacific War; among the lessons learned by the fleet's officers was the importance of the developing aircraft carrier force, which proved to be more than a simple scouting element. Combined operations also revealed that the slow 21-knot battleships were a significant hindrance to the much faster carriers and led to the development of the fast battleships of the , , and es. The Battle Fleet conducted joint Army-Navy exercises to evaluate the defenses of Pearl Harbor in 1925 as part of Fleet Problem V, which also included maneuvers off the coast of California. Later that year the fleet steamed across the Pacific to visit Australia and New Zealand on a goodwill tour. The fleet returned to San Pedro in September. A three-month visit to Hawaii began in April 1927. In 1928, she had a crane and an aircraft catapult on her fantail to accommodate reconnaissance floatplanes.

Her original 3-inch antiaircraft (AA) battery was replaced by eight /25 caliber guns during 1929–1930. Fleet Problems X and XI were held together in the Caribbean in March and April 1930, and following their conclusion ''Tennessee'' visited New York for a month before departing for home on 19 May. In June, she embarked on a tour of the Hawaiian islands that lasted for fourteen months, finally returning to California in February 1932. She thereafter conducted routine operations off the west coast for the next year and a half until October 1934, when she crossed back to the Atlantic for further training there. The rest of the 1930s followed the usual routine. In around 1935, the ship received eight .50-cal. M2 Browning machine-guns. In 1940, two 3-inch guns were re-installed, one on either side of the forward superstructure.

Fleet Problem XXI, the last iteration of the series, was held in early 1940; afterward, President Franklin D. Roosevelt ordered that the Battle Force transfer its homeport from San Pedro to Pearl Harbor in response to rising tension with Japan over the latter's waging of the Second Sino-Japanese War. Roosevelt hoped the move would deter further Japanese expansionism. ''Tennessee'' steamed to the Puget Sound Navy Yard for repairs before moving to Pearl Harbor, arriving there on 12 August. Fleet Problem XXII was scheduled for early 1941, but it was cancelled due to World War II. ''Tennessee'' spent the rest of 1941 with small-scale training operations in the Pacific; by December, she was at anchor in Pearl Harbor with the rest of the fleet.

World War II

Pearl Harbor

''Tennessee'' was moored along Battleship Row, to the southeast of Ford Island, on the morning of 7 December when the Japanese attacked Pearl Harbor. The battleship was tied up alongside, was ahead with abreast, and was astern. The first Japanese attack arrived at about 07:55, prompting ''Tennessee''s crew to go to general quarters; it took some five minutes for the men to get the ship's anti-aircraft guns into action. The ship received orders to get underway to respond to the attack, but before the crew got steam up in her boilers, she was trapped as the other battleships around her received crippling damage. ''West Virginia'' was torpedoed and sunk and ''Oklahoma'' capsized after being torpedoed. Shortly thereafter, dive bombers arrived overhead and fighters strafed the ships' anti-aircraft batteries. ''Arizona'' exploded after being hit by an armor-piercing bomb that detonated her magazines, spilling burning fuel oil into the water. The explosion also showered burning oil over ''Tennessee''s stern, and she was quickly surrounded by fire, which was augmented by oil leaking from ''West Virginia''.

At 08:20, Japanese bombers hit ''Tennessee'' twice; both bombs were converted large-caliber naval shells, the same type that had destroyed ''Arizona'', but neither detonated properly. The first partially penetrated the roof of turret III, failing to explode but sending fragments into the turret that disabled one of the guns. The second bomb hit turret II's center gun barrel and exploded, sending bomb fragments flying; one of these fragments killed the captain of ''West Virginia'', Mervyn S. Bennion, who had walked out to the open bridge. The blast disabled all three guns of that turret. Neither bomb inflicted serious damage, but the ship's magazines were flooded to avoid the risk of the fires raging aboard and around the vessel from spreading to them and igniting the propellant charges stored there. By 10:30 the crew had suppressed the fires aboard the ship, though oil still burned in the water around the ship for another two days. In an effort to push the burning oil away from the ship, she turned her screws at a speed of . In the course of the battle, ''Tennessee''s anti-aircraft gunners were credited with shooting down or assisting in the destruction of five Japanese aircraft.

''Tennessee'' remained trapped by the sunken battleships around her until ''Maryland'' could be pulled free on 9 December; she had been wedged into the dock by ''Oklahoma'' when she capsized and sank. The quays to which ''Tennessee'' had been moored had to be demolished to allow her to be towed out, as the sunken ''West Virginia'' had similarly forced her into them. This work was completed by 16 December, allowing the ship to be pulled slowly out past ''West Virginia'' and ''Oklahoma''. She was then taken into the Pearl Harbor Navy Yard for repairs. The fires had warped her hull plates, damaged seams, and loosened rivets, all of which needed to be repaired before she could get underway for permanent repairs. Once the hull was again watertight and her III turret received a patch cover, she got underway for Puget Sound for permanent repairs on 20 December, in company with ''Maryland'' and , both of which had also received only minimal damage in the attack. The three battleships were escorted by four destroyers.

Repairs, training, and modernization

While en route to the west coast, ''Pennsylvania'' left ''Tennessee'' and ''Maryland'' to head to Mare Island for repairs, while the other two vessels continued on to Puget Sound. They reached the naval yard of 29 December, where permanent repairs and a modernization began. The portions of ''Tennessee''s hull plating and electrical wiring that had been damaged by the fire were replaced, and her aft lattice mast was replaced with a small tower. In place of her .50-caliber machine guns, she received a battery of sixteen guns in quadruple mounts and fourteen Oerlikon autocannon. New Mark 11 versions of her 14-inch guns replaced the old Mark 4 barrels. The work was completed by late February 1942, and ''Tennessee'' got underway on 25 February with ''Maryland'' and the battleship . The three battleships steamed to San Francisco, where they joined Task Force 1, commanded by Rear Admiral William S. Pye. The ships then began a series of training maneuvers that lasted for several months to prepare for the coming campaigns in the central Pacific.

In the immediate aftermath of the Battle of Midway on 5 June, Pye took his ships to sea to defend against a possible incursion by the Japanese fleet after its defeat in the battle. By 14 June, the anticipated attack did not materialize, and so Pye turned his task force back to San Francisco. Task Force 1 went to sea again on 1 August for further training, and later that month ''Tennessee'' escorted the carrier to Pearl Harbor, arriving there on 14 August. ''Hornet'' was on her way to the Guadalcanal campaign; Admiral Chester Nimitz did not deploy ''Tennessee'' and the rest of Task Force 1 to the campaign owing to their heavy use of fuel oil; at that time in the war, the fleet had just seven tankers available for operations, not enough to operate both the fast carrier task force and Pye's battleships. Instead, ''Tennessee'' then steamed back east to Puget Sound for a reconstruction; by this time, her sister had been brought to Puget Sound to be thoroughly rebuilt after the Pearl Harbor raid, and the navy decided that ''Tennessee'' should be similarly modernized.

The work on ''Tennessee'' lasted nearly a year, and saw the ship radically altered. New anti-torpedo bulges were installed and her internal compartmentalization was improved to strengthen her resistance to underwater damage. Her superstructure was completely revised, with the old heavily armored conning tower being removed and a smaller tower was erected in its place to reduce interference with the anti-aircraft guns' fields of fire. The new tower had been removed from one of the s that had recently been rebuilt. The foremast was replaced with a tower mast that housed the bridge and the main battery director, and her second funnel was removed, with those boilers being trunked into an enlarged forward funnel. Horizontal protection was considerably strengthened to improve her resistance to air attack; 3 inches of special treatment steel (STS) was added to the deck over the magazines and of STS was added elsewhere.

The ship's weapons suite was also overhauled. She received air-search radar and fire-control radars for her main and secondary batteries, the latter seeing the mixed battery of 51-caliber and 25-caliber 5-inch guns replaced by a uniform battery of sixteen 5-inch/38 caliber guns in eight twin mounts. These were controlled by four Mk 37 directors. The light anti-aircraft battery was again revised, now consisting of ten quadruple Bofors guns and forty-three 20 mm Oerlikons. The changes doubled the ship's crew, to a total of 114 officers and 2,129 enlisted men. With the reconstruction completed, ''Tennessee'' returned to service on 7 May 1943 with a crew composed primarily of recent enlistees and began trials off Puget Sound. On 22 May, she departed for San Pedro to re-join the fleet.

The Aleutian Islands

On 31 May, ''Tennessee'' and the heavy cruiser steamed out of San Pedro, bound for Adak, Alaska, where they arrived on 9 June. On arrival, Rear Admiral Howard Kingman, the commander of Battleship Division Two, came aboard the ship. The ship joined Task Force 16, which had been organized to support the Aleutian Islands Campaign to recapture the islands of Attu and Kiska from the Japanese. By the time ''Tennessee'' arrived, the task force had already retaken Attu, so ''Tennessee'' was initially occupied with patrolling for Japanese forces that might launch a counter-attack. American radar operators, including those aboard ''Tennessee'', who were not familiar with operating the new equipment repeatedly made false reports of enemy contacts in the fog that blanketed the area. The supposed enemy contacts were in fact distant land masses that appeared to be ships that were much closer on the radar sets. These false reports culminated in the Battle of the Pips in late July, though ''Tennessee'' was not involved in that incident.

On 1 August, ''Tennessee'' received orders to approach Kiska and join the pre-invasion bombardment. At 13:10, she steamed into range, along with the battleship and three destroyers. ''Tennessee'' slowed, deployed paravanes from her bow to cut the mooring cables for any naval mines that might be in the area, and launched her Vought OS2U Kingfisher scout planes to spot the fall of her shells. By 16:10, she had closed to a distance of about from the beach and she opened fire with her 5-inch guns. Poor visibility hampered the ability of the Kingfishers to observe the ship's fire, but she nevertheless began firing with her 14-inch guns at 16:24. She fired sixty 14-inch shells at the area of what had been a Japanese submarine base before checking her fire at 16:45, by which time visibility had further diminished. After recovering her Kingfishers, she and the rest of the ships steamed back to Adak.

Two weeks later, ''Tennessee'' was again sent to shell Kiska early on the morning of 15 August, now to support the landing of ground forces. She opened fire at 05:00, targeting Japanese coastal artillery batteries on Little Kiska Island. She then shifted fire with her main battery to target anti-aircraft batteries on Kiska proper while her 5-inch guns set an artillery observation position on Little Kiska on fire. Following the bombardment, the soldiers were landed, only to discover that the Japanese had already withdrawn from the island in July. ''Tennessee'' thereafter left the Aleutians and returned to San Francisco on 31 August, where she conducted extensive training exercises. After replenishing her ammunition and stores, she departed for Hawaii for further battle training. From there, she steamed to the New Hebrides, where the invasion fleet was preparing for operations in the Gilbert Islands.

The Gilbert and Marshall Islands

=Battle of Tarawa

=

The first target of the Gilbert and Marshall campaign was the island of Betio, the main Japanese position in the Tarawa Atoll

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