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HISTORY
USS Washington (BB-56), the second of two battleships in the North
Carolina class, was the third ship of the United States Navy named
in honor of the 42nd state. Her keel was laid down on 14 June 1938,
at the Philadelphia Naval Shipyard. Launched on 1 June 1940,
Washington went through fitting-out before being commissioned on 15
May 1941, with Captain Howard H. J. Benson in command. In early
1942, Washington and twenty other American ships were the first to
be equipped with fully operational radar. Washington suffered no
losses to hostile action during the entire course of the war,
although she had some close calls: she was almost hit by "Long
Lance" torpedoes off Guadalcanal, and was hit once by enemy
ordnance, a 5-inch shell that passed through her radar antenna
without detonation.
In 1942, she was sent to the North Atlantic to fill in for British
ships that had been redeployed around Madagascar to counter possible
Japanese attacks across the Indian Ocean. She was assigned to guard
against a possible sortie by the German battleship Tirpitz, and to
provide distant cover for several Iceland–Murmansk convoys. In July
1942, she returned to the United States for an overhaul before being
deployed to the Pacific in August for action against Imperial Japan,
where she became the flagship of Rear Admiral Willis Augustus Lee.
Two months after her arrival at Tonga in September 1942, Washington
was tasked with intercepting a Japanese naval task force near
Guadalcanal along with South Dakota and four destroyers. In the
ensuing battle, South Dakota was severely damaged, but Washington
sustained almost no damage while her guns sank the battleship
Kirishima and critically damaged the destroyer Ayanami, leading to
her scuttling later that night. Washington operated as an escort for
aircraft carrier task forces for most of 1943, and then bombarded
Nauru in December in company with five other battleships. Around
dawn on 1 February 1944, Washington rammed the battleship Indiana
and incurred several fatalities when the latter was maneuvering
across the formation to refuel destroyers. With around 60 feet (18
m) of her bow heavily damaged, Washington was forced to retire. The
Pearl Harbor shipyards fitted the battleship with a temporary bow; a
full restoration had to wait until the ship docked in the Puget
Sound Navy Yard.
Washington arrived back in the war zone only in mid-1944. She took
part in bombarding Saipan and Tinian before joining the Battle of
the Philippine Sea, where the Japanese Combined Fleet's aircraft
were decisively defeated by American sea-based fighters and
anti-aircraft fire. For the rest of the war, Washington alternated
between shore bombardment and carrier escort, including direct
support in the battles of Iwo Jima and Okinawa. On 1 July 1945, the
battleship headed for the United States for a badly needed overhaul.
She entered the Puget Sound Navy Yard and did not emerge until
October, after the end of the war. She sailed to Philadelphia,
participating in Navy Day celebrations there, before her assignment
to Operation Magic Carpet, the withdrawal of American military
personnel from overseas deployments. Washington was decommissioned
on 27 June 1947, stricken on 1 June 1960, and sold for scrapping on
24 May 1961.
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