Rainy Day on the Mighty I
It happened 80 years ago today.
The South Dakota-class battleship USS Indiana (BB-58), seen taking water over the bow, while steaming through a typhoon in the Okinawa area, circa 5 June 1945.
Official U.S. Navy photograph, now in the collections of the National Archives. 80-G-342732
The storm was bad enough to claim one of her floatplanes. From her deck log that day:
The “Hoosier Houseboat” earned nine battlestars for her WWII service and entered the Pacific Reserve Fleet’s Bremerton Group in 1946 alongside her sister, Alabama, and decommissioned the following year for mothballs.
While “Big Al” got a ticket home to Mobile for museum ship service in 1960, Indiana instead went to the scrapyard, although lots of her relics are on display in her home state.
Indiana War Memorial in Indianapolis (Photo: Chris Eger)