The USS Arizona is an important historical warship used in both the first and second world wars. It received its name from an official act of Congress honoring Arizona's admission into the union as a full state in 1912. Today it is well-known for the fact that 1,177 of its crew members died in the Dec. 7, 1941 attack of Pearl Harbor. It holds the record for the highest number of recorded casualties on any American warship.
Construction began on the USS Arizona on March 16, 1914, in the New York Navy Yard in Brooklyn. The warship was ceremonially launched on June 19, 1915, by Miss Esther Ross, daughter of a prominent Arizona pioneer. Officially commissioned on Oct. 17, 1916, the USS Arizona served as a gunnery training vessel with the Atlantic Fleet during World War I.
After the war, the battleship resumed routine peacetime operations, including training exercises, gunnery practice and cruises. From 1929 through 1931, a thorough reconstruction was undertaken, updating the weaponry and offering better protection against enemy fire. In August 1931, the battleship joined the Pacific Battle Fleet, and, in 1940, President Franklin D. Roosevelt ordered the warships to the Pearl Harbor base.
The mighty American warship, which weighed 31,400 tons, was 608 feet long and stood more than 97 feet high at the tallest beam, was built at a cost of $12,993,579. Its maximum speed was 21 knots, or just over 24 mph, with oil-burning, geared turbines generating 34,000 horsepower. The weaponry consisted of 12 14-inch, 45-caliber guns in the main battery and 11 5-inch, 51-caliber guns on each side of the ship. The arsenal was modified in the 1930s reducing the number of side guns and adding eight 25-caliber, longer range, anti-aircraft guns.
Minutes after 8 a.m. Hawaii time, Sunday, Dec. 7, 1941, Japanese carrier aircraft dropped bombs on the USS Arizona, destroying a forward turret on the starboard side of the ship, triggering an explosion of the ammunition magazines and engulfing the battleship in flames. The large, structural framework above the main deck at the front of the ship collapsed into the cavity caused by the explosion and the warship sank, the hull becoming a tomb for the crew members who perished in the attack.
The USS Arizona remains where it sank near Ford Island in Pearl Harbor as a memorial to the crew members who lost their lives. Although the American warship had be taken out of commission, Admiral Arthur W. Radford, commander in chief of the Pacific Fleet, ordered a flagpole placed at the site and the daily raising and lowering of the U.S. flag commenced on March 7, 1950. President Dwight D. Eisenhower approved the construction of a monument, which was dedicated on Memorial Day, May 30, 1962. The monument was erected straddling the ship’s midsection with a visitors center on the shore nearby.
