Arizona (Battleship)

<p>USS Arizona (BB-39) was moored inboard of the repair ship Vestal (AR-4) when the Japanese struck Pearl Harbor. Early reports claimed that she had been hit by one torpedo in the first part of the action. However, this appears not to have been the case, and the destruction of the ship was entirely the work of Japanese horizontal bombers, which struck her with several bombs. Some of these caused damage to her after and midships areas, but their effects were minor compared with what resulted from one that penetrated beside her forward turrets.</p>

<p>The massive explosion that followed has never been fully explained, since the bomb apparently did not pierce Arizona's armored deck, which protected her magazines. Many qualified authorities have blamed powder storage outside of the magazines as the cause, but this is conjectural and probably will always remain so. In any case, the battleship was utterly devastated from in front of her first turret back into her machinery spaces. Her sides were blown out and the turrets, conning tower, and much of the superstructure dropped several feet into her wrecked hull. This tipped her foremast forward, giving the wreck its distinctive appearance.</p>

USS Arizona was the second and last of the Pennsylvania class of "super-dreadnought" battleships built for the United States Navy in the mid-1910s. Named in honor of the 48th state's recent admission into the union in 1912 and commissioned in 1916, the ship remained stateside during World War I. After the conflict's end, Arizona escorted President Woodrow Wilson to the Paris Peace Conference. The ship was then deployed to Turkey in 1919 to represent American interests during the Greco-Turkish War. Several years later, she was transferred to the Pacific Fleet and remained there for the rest of her career ...