USS Nevada slides into the Fore River; the Navy calls her armor scheme unlike anything built before
In the summer of 1914, the US Navy had been pushing toward battleships that could steam thousands of miles without refueling and still out-armor anything else afloat, with post-1908 designs aiming for roughly 8,000 miles at cruising speed. On July 11, at the Fore River Shipbuilding yard, Eleanor Anne Seibert, niece of Nevada Governor Tasker Oddie, christened the USS Nevada as it slid into the water. The ship introduced oil fuel, triple gun turrets, and the "all or nothing" armor scheme, packing 41.1 percent of its weight into armor over only the places that mattered. The New York Times called her "the greatest [battleship] afloat."
Nevada's design answered a specific American strategic problem: the Monroe Doctrine required a navy that could reach across oceans, not just defend a coastline. Its oil-fired engines and long steaming range were built with an eye toward the Pacific and the Imperial Japanese Navy, decades before that rivalry turned into war. The ship that resulted became the template for a generation of American battleships, until the North Carolina class marked a departure from the standard type in the late 1930s.
QWhy did the Navy paint Nevada bright orange after World War II?
In 1946, stripped of her wartime gray, Nevada was repainted reddish-orange so bombardiers flying over Bikini Atoll could spot her clearly from the air. She had been assigned as a target ship for Operation Crossroads, the Navy's atomic bomb tests. The bombardier missed anyway. The bomb, nicknamed Able, landed about 710 yards off target and struck the attack transport Gilliam instead, leaving Nevada scorched but afloat, orange paint and all, for two more years.
QHow close did Nevada's guns get to American troops at Normandy?
During the invasion, Nevada's 14-inch guns fired accurately enough to hit targets just 600 yards from the front line where American soldiers were fighting, an unnervingly tight margin for naval gunfire. Her shells could also range 17 nautical miles inland, striking targets far beyond the beach itself. Observers on shore described her firing with such intensity she appeared to lean back with each salvo, a detail from witnesses watching the barrels absorb the recoil at extreme angles of fire.
QWhat saved Nevada's magazines from exploding at Pearl Harbor?
As Nevada took bomb hits near Turret 1 and gasoline fires spread across her deck, those fires threatened the ship's main ammunition magazines directly below. The magazines happened to be empty. Nevada had recently had its ammunition replaced, and the timing, pure coincidence, likely kept the fires from triggering a catastrophic secondary explosion. She became the only battleship to get underway during the attack, prompting one observer to call her the only bright spot in an otherwise dismal morning.
