The image of Oklahoma sitting on its side and smoking in ruin became one of the most famous of the Pearl Harbor attack. Her hull was righted and moved to dry dock between 1942 to 1943 with the hopes of salvaging the battleship for the war ahead. However, she was instead decommissioned on September 1st, 1944 as newer and better warships were coming online. Her hull was stripped of its war-making usefulness and her hulk sold off for scrapping. A storm encountered during her tow operation saw her lines cut loose from her tug boats, the mighty warship sinking to the depths below.
In December of 2007, a memorial to the lost crew of USS Oklahoma was erected at Ford Island, Pearl Harbor, Hawaii. The USS Missouri (BB-63) currently stands at her former moorings in honor of the fallen and serves as a floating museum ship.
As built, USS Oklahoma featured a displacement of 27,500 tons (long) and a length of 583 feet, a beam of 95.5 feet (108 feet after the 1927 modernization) and a draught of 28.5 feet. Propulsion came from 12 x Babcock and Wilcox oil-fired boilers (6 x Bureau Express oil boilers after 1927) feeding vertical triple expansion reciprocating steam engines developing 24,800 horsepower to 2 x shafts. Maximum speed was 20.5 knots with a range out to 5,120 nautical miles. Her original crew complement numbered 864 and this was increased to 1,398 in 1929.
Her original armament was 10 x 14" /45 caliber main guns arranged in two triple-gunned turrets and two twin-gunned turrets. She carried 21 x 5" /51 caliber Dual-Purpose (DP) guns as a secondary battery until 1918 when this became twelve such guns. Anti-Aircraft (AA) service was through 2 x 3" (76mm) /50 caliber guns which was increased in 1925 to eight guns. She also carried at least 2 x 21" (533mm) torpedo tubes which were cut out in her 1927-1929 overhaul period. By World War 2, she also was given 8 x 1.1" (28mm) AA guns to help improve her self-defense against air attack.
Her profile sat two primary turrets ahead of the bridge superstructure. Two main masts were featured, one aft of the bridge and the other along the aft superstructure. The stern section carried the remaining set of primary gun turrets. Her bow was well-pointed and relatively unobstructed and her two fore gun turrets forced her bridge superstructure closer to midships near the smoke funnel. Armor protection ranged from 340mm at the belt and 330mm at the bulkheads to 460mm at the primary turrets and 406mm along the conning tower. She could service up to three floatplanes through two onboard catapults and recovery cranes though this was reduced to two floatplanes and one catapult by the time of World War 2.
For her service in the Second World War, USS Oklahoma was awarded a sole Battle Star.
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