When the U.S. Navy's USS Arkansas (B33) settled into a berth in October 1945 at the Seattle seaport, most people thought her mighty career had ended. Arkansas Gov. Ben Laney was in Seattle to salute the lady.
"There was much for Gov. Laney and the state of Arkansas to be proud of on behalf of its namesake warship," wrote Ray and Steven Hanley in a book by the Butler Center for Arkansas Studies in Little Rock. "Arky: The Saga of the USS Arkansas" was released earlier this year.
More to the story
The USS Arkansas (B33) was not the first ship to carry this proud state’s name.
• CSS Arkansas. The Conferate ironclad warship the CSS Arkansas was rushed into service to break the Union Navy’s siege at Vicksburg, Miss., in 1922. The ship’s crew burned her near Baton Rouge a month later as the engines failed within site of the enemy.
• USS Arkansas. A wooden naval vessel was launched in 1863 as the Tonawanda, but bought by the Union to outfit as a warship, and she was rechristened as the USS Arkansas. The ship joined the blockade efforts around the mouth of the Mississippi River. She survived the Civil War, was sold to a costal merchant and sank in March 1886, after becoming stranded on Grecian Shoals off the coast of Florida.
• USS Arkansas. The third Arkansas was put to sea in 1900, one of four single-turreted, monitor-class warship powered by coal for its steam engines. The stealthy vessel spent its career on training and patrol without ever firing a shot. As the construction of the modern battleship in 1919, the ship was renamed the USS Ozark, the decomissioned and sold for scrap in 1922.
• USS Arkansas (B33). 1912 to 1946. The celebrated Wyoming-class battleship served in World War I and World War II. She was sunk in the Marshall Islands a part of the Operation Crossroads atomic bomb testing.
• USS Arkansas (CGN-41). Some 20 years after the USS Arkansas (B33) sank in the Marshall Islands, the Navy launched a new namesake for the state of Arkansas. Commissioned in 1981, The USS Arkansas (CGN-41) was the fourth and last ship in the Virginia class of nuclear-powered, guided-missile cruisers. She spent much of her service on sentinel duty in and around the Middle East and the Mediterranean. She was the first nuclear vessel to cross through the Suez Canal. The ship was decommissioned and scrapped in 1999, having never fired a shot in combat.
SOURCE: “The Arky: The Saga of the USS Arkansas,” Butler Center Books (2015).
"The Arky" sailed 135,000 miles and fired almost 5 million pounds of ammunition during World War II. Her crews were awarded four battle stars for her service -- which joined her seven combat ribbons for service in Navy campaigns from the 1913 occupation of Veracruz, Mexico, to patrolling the seas during World War I and combat operations in both the Atlantic and Pacific fronts during World War II. She even played a part in the design of the Arkansas state flag.
"Her deeds represented an amazing record for a ship that had first been put to sea in 1912," the Hanleys wrote. A grand lady, the USS Arkansas served the country for about 34 years.
The authors used military records and the ship's newspaper (the Arklight or Arklite) as well as personal interviews, letters, journals and oral histories of men who served on the Navy's B33 to tell the story. Pictures -- many personal and previously unpublished -- show the vessel from construction to destruction and chronicle more than 30 years of life aboard the ship.
"The battleship that would often be referred to during World War II as the 'Arky' was under construction by the end of the first decade of the 20th century," the book begins the history. She was christened the USS Arkansas by Nancy Macon, daughter of Arkansas Congressman Robert B. Macon, on Jan. 14, 1911, and was commissioned Sept. 17, 1912, at the Philadelphia Naval Yard.
The USS Arkansas was the second of two Wyoming-class battleships released. She was a near-sister of later ships the USS Florida, the USS Texas, the USS Utah and the USS New York. "These new American 'dreadnoughts' were designed to win sea battles through superior fire power and speed," the Hanleys wrote.
"Measuring 562 feet by 93 feet, the Arkansas was armed with a dozen 12-inch guns, each with a 16,000-yard range," the book quotes a Navy description. "The ship's second battery consisted of 21 5-inch and 50 1-caliber guns protected by armor around the vessel's superstructure. Below the waterline were two 21-inch torpedo tubes. Designed for a 1,594-man crew, and powered by newly developed coal-burning steam engines, she had a top speed of about 21 knots (approximately 24 miles per hour.)"
One of the first cruises by the Arkansas in 1912 took President William Howard Taft and his entourage to the Panama Canal Zone for an inspection of the unfinished water way -- although the Arkansas would pass through the completed canal many times during her career. The ship and her crew served as part of the honor guard for the funeral of Admiral George Dewey and escorted President Woodrow Wilson's ship to France for the Paris Peace Conference at Versailles, ending World War I.
But the winds of a new war were blowing. "The Arkansas' serving in any coming war was not considered likely," the Hanleys wrote. "The ship was nearing her 30th birthday -- one of the oldest ships left in the Navy -- and her crew could not imagine the old ship ever seeing a war zone again."
In fact, the 29-year-old battleship was ordered to Casco Bay, Maine, to await retirement orders, a decommissioning and probably the scrapyard. "Fate, however, had other plans for the aging warrior," the men wrote.
Within a week of the Japanese attack at Pearl Harbor and the U.S declaration of war, the old battleship received new orders. "The loss of most of the U.S. Pacific Fleet meant every available ship was going to be needed in a war that was now a worldwide effort," according to "The Arky."
The battleship was soon overhauled for (1940s) modern warfare, but served as a patrol and convoy ship. Then, "on April 18, 1944, the word went out to the crew of the Arkansas that her convoy and troop transport duties were over and that she was called for a much heavier duty," the Hanleys recorded. "The USS Arkansas was ready for the more-militant role of which a militant capital ship was deserving.
"Remarkably, in 30 years of service, the Arkansas had never fired a shot in combat -- only countless thousands of rounds in practice drills and competitions (often winning awards)," the record continues. "This all changed at 0552 hours on June 6, 1944, just as the sky was starting to glow with the coming day."
The USS Arkansas shelled shorelines and dug-in enemy troops to assist in the Allied landing on D-Day at Omaha Beach in Normandy. "The ship first opened fire with her 12 main guns on a German battery at Longues-sur-Mer. ... In concert with other bombardment units, the Arkansas 12-inchers hurled a tempest of hot steel into pre-arranged targets," the writers described.
"Nighttime on June 6 offered the exhausted crew of the Arkansas little chance for rest," they continued. "Just before midnight, four German JU 88 bombers zeroed in on the Allied fleet anchored off shore. A primary target was the battleship that had hurled much destruction at the Germans' entrenched forces during the daylight hours. The ship's gun crews knocked out two bombers headed directly at the Arkansas -- an action that continued each night the Arkansas sat off Normandy."
By Aug. 17, 1944, Germans were no longer in reach of the battleship's guns. "Although the ship had avoided hits from the enemy, she was not without damage," the Hanleys wrote. "The constant pounding and vibrations from the firing of her big guns had done damage to the old ship. Sixteen of her steel doors or the frames were warped and would not close properly. It was time to sail for the United States, to get some repair work and to see if a role remained for the oldest battleship in the U.S. Navy in the fight to save the world from tyranny."
Three months later, she traveled again through the Panama Canal to reach the Pacific theater. From Feb. 16 to 19, 1945, the Arkansas sat off Iwo Jima, pounding the slopes of the western face of Mount Suribachi, where thousands of Japanese were dug into bunkers and caves. On Feb. 23, crew members on deck witnessed the celebrated raising of the Stars and Stripes by Marines atop Mount Suribachi.
Iwo Jima was safely in American hands, but it was not long before the Arkansas' crew pulled a new assignment as part of the largest and most difficult mission of the U.S. Navy in the war -- the last major Japanese stronghold in the path of the enemy's home islands, the Hanleys wrote. "The 82-day battle for Okinawa opened with the bombardment from the Arkansas and other ships on March 25, 1945, a week ahead of the invasion of the island by the Marines," they noted. The Japanese made many attempts to strike the Arkansas, both from their shore-mounted guns and from the air and kamikaze attacks.
"On Sept. 17, 1945, the 33rd birthday of the Arkansas, the ship and her crew found themselves riding out a typhoon off a now peaceful Okinawa, with waves crashing completely over the deck," the book reads. "She survived, just as she had survived the near misses off Normandy and the kamikazes. She was soon transporting 800 happy soldiers home to the United States. In what were coined 'magic carpet rides,' the ship would make a total of four of these trips bringing home soldiers and marines."
But the old girl wasn't done yet. Rather than going to the scrapyard, in 1946, the USS Arkansas took her position in the Bikini Atoll in the Marshall Islands to be purposely destroyed in atomic bomb testing.
"The 27,000-ton Arkansas, given that it was only 225 yards from the detonation, would have no chance of survival," the Hanleys wrote. "The underwater shock wave crushed the starboard side of its hull and rolled the battleship onto its side. It took only seconds to sink. The 562-foot ship, three times as long as the lagoon was deep, seemed to lift straight up, its bow pinned to the sea floor, its stern protruding 350 feet into the air. With what would have been -- in the literary imagination -- a mighty groan, the Arkansas then toppled backward into the water, topside down.
"The old dreadnought the Arkansas -- only lightly damaged by the enemy in two world wars, despite near misses by German batteries at Normandy and close calls form Japanese kamikaze dive bombers in the South Pacific -- had been sent to the bottom of the sea by its own U.S. Navy," the authors continued.
"Ironically, events in decades after the Bikini Atoll bomb tests would deliver the state of Arkansas in a role in the history of the Marshall Islands quite unrelated to having its warship being used as a target," writers noted. Marshall Islanders from the bombed islands relocated to Northwest Arkansas, part of the largest Marshallese population outside the islands.
"The USS Arkansas is still at Bikini, resting mostly upside down in the silt beneath 150 feet of water," the saga concludes.
NAN Our Town on 08/06/2015