Tag Archives: USS Indiana (BB 58)

Rainy Day on the Mighty I

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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)

Hoosier Houseboat

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80 years ago this week, a fantastic series of photos of the late South Dakota-class battleship USS Indiana (BB 58) conducting a high-speed turn in Puget Sound, November 30, 1944.

BuShips photos via Navsource and the Indiana State Library collection.

How about this great shot showing off her 9 16″/45s, 20 5″/38s, 28 40mm/60 Bofors, and 35 20mm/80 Oerlikons.

Indiana, commissioned on 30 April 1942, had spent two years forward deployed in the Western Pacific, earning her stripes, before arriving at the Navy Yard at Bremerton on 23 October for a refit. She would remain there into early December before arriving at Pearl Harbor on New Year’s 1945. By 24 January 1945, her guns were ringing out against Iwo Jima and she would spend the rest of the war operational.

She traveled 180,000 nm during her war service, conducting six shore bombardment campaigns, bagging 15 Japanese planes, and earning nine battle stars in the process.

Decommissioned on 11 September 1947, she languished in mothballs for 15 years until stricken from the NVR and sold in 1963 for her value in scrap metal.

Her home state has an extensive collection of her relics at the War Memorial Museum in Indianapolis.

(Photo: Chris Eger)