USS California, hull number BB-44, was the second of two s built for the United States Navy between her keel laying in October 1916 and her commissioning in August 1921. 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. California served as the flagship of the Battle Fleet in the Pacific Ocean for the 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.
California was moored in Pearl Harbor on 7 December 1941 when the Japanese attacked the port, bringing the United States into World War II. The ship was moderately damaged by a pair of torpedoes and a bomb, but a fire disabled the ship's electrical system, preventing the pumps from being used to keep the ship afloat. California slowly filled with water over the following three days and eventually sank. Her crew suffered 165 casualties and four men were awarded the Medal of Honor for their actions during the attack. She was raised in April 1942, repaired and heavily rebuilt, and returned to service in January 1944.
The ship thereafter supported the amphibious operations conducted during the Pacific War, including the Mariana and Palau Islands campaign (though she was damaged in a collision with and thus missed the Battle of Peleliu) and the Philippines campaign, during which she took part in the Battle of Surigao Strait. She was hit by a kamikaze during the invasion of Lingayen Gulf in January 1945, but after undergoing repairs, she rejoined the fleet supporting troops fighting on Okinawa during the Battle of Okinawa. Her crew took part in the occupation of Japan after the end of the war, and after returning to the United States via the Indian and Atlantic Oceans, was laid up in Philadelphia in 1946. She remained in the fleet's inventory until 1959, when she was 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.
California 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 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. 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, California was also fitted with two torpedo tubes, mounted submerged in the hull, one on each broadside.
The main armored belt was thick, while the main armored deck was up to thick. The main battery gun turrets had thick faces on barbettes. The conning tower had thick sides.
Service history Prewar service
Californias keel was laid down on 25 October 1916 at the Mare Island Naval Shipyard in Vallejo, California. Work was halted for a short time during World War I while the shipyard focused on outfitting smaller craft. She was launched 20 November 1919 and commissioned on 10 August 1921. On entering service, she joined the Battle Fleet, serving as its flagship. For the duration of her peacetime career, California was occupied with routine training exercises, including joint Army-Navy maneuvers and the annual fleet problems. On the night of 11 November 1924, Lieutenant Dixie Kiefer took off from the ship, the first night aircraft launch in history. Further experimentation with aircraft continued in early 1925, when the ships of the Battle Fleet received a squadron of Curtiss TS-1 floatplanes on 31 March. In mid-1925, the Battle Fleet crossed the Pacific Ocean on a goodwill cruise to Australia and New Zealand; on the way, the ships stopped in Pago Pago, American Samoa. California underwent a refit at the Puget Sound Navy Yard at Bremerton, Washington later that year.
In 1926, California had an aircraft catapult installed on one of her main battery turrets, and she carried up to three Vought UO-1 floatplanes. She participated in a naval review for President Calvin Coolidge held off Hampton Roads, Virginia on 4 June 1927. In late 1929 and early 1930, the ship received a new battery of eight /25 cal guns on anti-aircraft mounts in place of the old 3-inch guns. She took part in Fleet Problem X, conducted in the Caribbean Sea, from 10 to 15 March 1930. Fleet Problem XI followed, again in the Caribbean, from 14 to 18 April. After the conclusion of the exercises, California steamed north to New York City, thereafter joining a naval review for President Herbert Hoover off the Virginia Capes on 20 May. The ship then returned to the Pacific and after arriving, visited Port Angeles, Washington from 7 to 11 July. She operated off Puget Sound through 11 August before steaming south to San Francisco, where she stayed from 17 to 24 August. In early 1931, she and the rest of the Battle Fleet steamed south to the Panama Canal zone.
Fleet Problem XII took place from 15 to 21 February in the waters off the canal; the exercises consisted of an attack by a fleet reliant on aircraft carriers against the canal zone, which was defended by California and the battleships of the Battle Fleet. The maneuvers revealed critical limitations in the endurance and armament of the carrier aircraft of the day, and the battleships were easily able to defeat the carrier force. From 1 July to 16 August, California was stationed in Puget Sound, and later in August she steamed south to San Francisco and then to San Pedro. The ship took part in gunnery practice in early 1932 off San Nicolas Island. In March 1933, the frigate , then on a tour of the United States, arrived in California; a fleet of 130 ships, including California, welcomed the vessel on her arrival in Long Beach on 9 March. The next day, the 1933 Long Beach earthquake occurred, causing significant damage to the city and killing around 120 people. The fleet sent some 4,000 men ashore to assist in the relief effort, including crewmen from California.
In 1934, California was assigned to Battleship Division (BatDiv) 4, though she retained her role as fleet flagship. Following Fleet Problem XV, held from 19 April to 12 May in the Caribbean, the fleet visited Haiti for two weeks. On 25 May, the ships steamed north for another naval review off New York on 31 May, attended by President Franklin D. Roosevelt. On its return to the Pacific over the course of 27 October to 9 November, the Battle Fleet conducted exercises as it passed through the canal and steamed to San Pedro, including nighttime attacks by the accompanying destroyers. The maneuvers culminated in an attack by a force of simulated battleships—played by a group of light cruisers—the carrier , and several submarines. Thereafter, California and several other vessels participated in amphibious assault training on San Clemente Island on 15 November. For Fleet Problem XVI, held from 29 April to 10 June 1935, the fleet conducted a series of maneuvers in the eastern Pacific, ranging from Alaskan waters down to Midway Island and Hawaii.
In mid-1937, California transferred to BatDiv 2, and on 7 July the ships of the division visited Hawaii, returning to California on 22 August. California and her sister transited the Panama Canal in early 1938 for a visit to Ponce, Puerto Rico, which lasted from 6 to 11 March. In 1939, the Navy decided to acquire six experimental XAF radar sets; on being delivered to the Navy, they were designated as CXAM radar; one set was installed aboard California in 1940, with the other five going to the carrier and three heavy cruisers. In April and May, California participated in Fleet Problem XX, which was again held in the eastern Pacific. Following the conclusion of the maneuvers, Roosevelt ordered the Battle Fleet to remain in Hawaii permanently; the new forward deployment was calculated to deter Japanese aggression in the Pacific. As tensions rose owing to World War II in Europe and the Second Sino-Japanese War in Asia, the Navy cancelled Fleet Problem XXII, which had been scheduled for 1941. Early that year, the ship underwent an overhaul that concluded on 15 April, after which the ship made a visit to San Francisco.
World War II Pearl Harbor attack
On the morning of 7 December 1941, California was moored on the southeastern side of Ford Island, the southernmost ship along Battleship Row. At the time, the ship had two of her 5-inch guns and two of her .50-cal. machine guns designated as ready guns, with fifty 5-inch shells and four hundred .50-cal. rounds at the guns. Immediately after the Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor began, Californias first lieutenant, Lieutenant Commander Marion Little, who was the senior officer aboard the ship at the time, issued the order to general quarters. Little ordered the guns into action and prepared to get the ship underway. At 08:03, the crews of the ready guns began to engage the Japanese aircraft, which included Mitsubishi A6M Zero fighters that strafed the ship. The gunners quickly expended the ready ammunition, however, and the magazines had to be unlocked before they could be resupplied. While this effort was going on, a pair of Nakajima B5N torpedo bombers approached and dropped their torpedoes toward California. Both hit the ship at 08:05, one forward and the other further aft. The former detonated below the armor belt at frame 52 (between number 2 turret and the bridge), creating a hole high and long, destructively deforming the first torpedo bulkhead and transverse stiffeners between frames 47 and 60, and holing the second bulkhead with fragments. The latter tore a hole that was long below the belt armor. The interior torpedo bulkheads nevertheless held and helped to contain the flooding.