On the evening of November 14, 1942, as darkness enveloped the Pacific,
battleships USS South Dakota, Washington, and four destroyers embarked on a covert mission
under Vice-Admiral Willis A. Lee to intercept a significant Japanese fleet near Savo Island.
Leading a group of destroyers and cruisers was the battleship Kirishima,
one of the mightiest ships of the Empire.
The guns on both sides roared to life, ripping holes into hulls and decks. The Japanese ships
lined up and moved in to perform what they believed to be a coup de grâce on the Americans.
Not to be outdone, South Dakota and Washington mirrored the move.
However, as South Dakota was about to enter the fray, a sudden blackout struck,
disabling her radar and cutting off communication with Washington, vital for the safety of her crew.
Unwilling to give up, Captain Thomas Gatch, an eccentric yet beloved leader, decided to steam
ahead anyway, trusting his expertly-trained crew of ‘wild men’ to rise to the occasion.
Now, with both fleets mere thousands of yards apart, a rare event in World War 2 and naval
history as a whole was about to ensue: a battleship versus battleship showdown.
USS South Dakota had one of the most remarkable anti-aircraft arsenals of its time:
40-millimeter Bofors, 1.1-inch guns, and 20-millimeter Oerlikon autocannons,
all designed to create a lethal barrier against enemy warplanes. Today,
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In 1938, as the Japanese Empire rejected all naval treaty obligations,
the United States Congress agreed to fund major shipbuilding programs.
By then, aircraft and submarines made navy battleships much more vulnerable than in
World War 1, where their only other adversaries were ships of their kind.
As such, new generations of modernized battleships
like the South Dakota class had thicker armored decks and much more firepower,
meant to make it harder for airplanes and submarines to catch and destroy them.
Displacing a whopping 35,000 tons, South Dakota, the first of her class,
was the heaviest United States ship ever constructed. Despite being nearly 700 feet long,
the vessel dashed through the seas at a top speed of 27 knots, placing it in the fast
battleship category of the Navy. These ships were expected to participate in task forces
alongside aircraft carriers, protecting them and destroying everything that posed a threat.
Worsening relations between America and Japan hurried the construction of South Dakota,
and when it was completed, the public was not allowed to attend the launching ceremony.
Sure enough, by the time the battleship was ready for sea duty in August of 1942,
the United States was at war against the Axis powers.
On August 16, 1942, exactly three years to the day before Japan's surrender, South Dakota and her 115
officers and 1,678 men crew began a long voyage towards the waters of the South Pacific.
The battleship's first-ever commander was Captain Thomas L. Gatch, a known eccentric,
admirer of Shakespeare sonnets, and an American Civil War connoisseur.
With no previous combat experience, he quickly adapted,
championing the philosophy that the primary role of battleships like
the South Dakota was to decisively destroy enemy vessels and aircraft.
As such, the skipper prioritized gunnery training at the expense
of nearly every other task on his ship.
Throughout the voyage, to ensure that their skills were honed to perfection,
Gatch frequently summoned his crew to battle stations to drill with the ship's sixteen-inch
guns, which fired massive shells weighing over a ton across a range of nearly 30,000 yards.
With the constant drilling and practice, the men's gun handling skills improved quickly,
and this speedy training earned the Captain the nickname Gunpowder Gatch.
Historians and former sailors agree that Gatch was an exceptional Captain,
adored by all his men for his unique leadership rules.
Gatch's leadership style was unconventional; he cared little for the traditional naval emphasis on
appearance, allowing his crew the freedom to dress more casually. This approach fostered a unique
camaraderie and a sense of rugged individualism among the sailors, often described as "wild men."
While the ship was often dirty, this did not imply a lack of discipline or readiness;
the ship's guns were meticulously maintained.
These unique rules and ways of living earned South Dakota a reputation unique among the
Navy's battleships. But despite the somewhat unorthodox practices, as the battleship finally
neared warfare waters, according to naval historian Samuel Eliot Morison: [QUOTE]
"No ship more eager to fight ever entered the Pacific, for Captain Gatch, by ... exercising
a natural gift for leadership, had welded the green crew into a splendid fighting team."
While on the way to the Solomon Islands, the battleship struck a reef,
and the damage caused it to travel to Pearl Harbor for repairs. But this incident may
have been a blessing in disguise as workers also replaced the ship's
antiaircraft guns with highly effective forty-millimeter models in quad mounts.
By October 1942, South Dakota was finally on her way, just in time for the most heated
moments of the Battle for Guadalcanal. As the end of the month approached,
the Japanese troops were desperately trying to drive the Americans out of their land and into
the sea, where a large fleet of carriers led by their fiercest empire commanders
was ready to strike and sweep away any American unit that stood in their way.
And even though the US Navy was still perfecting its air attack defense tactics,
Task Force 16, commanded by Rear Admiral Thomas Kinkaid, consisting of South Dakota,
carrier USS Enterprise, two cruisers, and eight destroyers, was ready to fight.
On October 26, In the Battle of the Santa Cruz Islands, as the prime target,
Enterprise was quickly swarmed by a dizzying volume of Japanese aircraft coming from all
sides. Maneuvering as fast as possible to get close to the Big-E, the men of South Dakota
finally put their grueling gunnery training to good use and unleashed all the antiaircraft
fire they could, claiming 32 enemy warplanes destroyed but officially credited with 26.
This came at a cost, for the battleship would not escape the battle unscathed.
Amid the antiaircraft melee, a massive 500-pound bomb hit the vessel's main gun turret. While the
gun mount was so heavily protected that the gun crew did not notice the damage, the men near
the bridge, including Captain Gatch himself, surely did. Severely injured in the jugular,
two quartermasters quickly rushed in to save the life of their beloved skipper.
Back on the damaged bridge, the heat of the moment caused a communication mishap
that caused the ship to lose control and nearly collide with Enterprise,
with the latter maneuvering at the very last minute to avoid it.
With the skipper out of the fight, the executive officer stepped up and stabilized the situation,
resuming their protective role over the task force.
But the scene was still chaotic, and the men of South Dakota, still extremely focused and stressed
out of their minds, accidentally fired upon six SBD dive bombers returning to their carrier.
This incident sparked a unique reputation for South Dakota:
shoot first and ask questions later. According to Navy veteran Donald Young,
Navy pilots had a simple rule regarding the South Dakota class battleship: (QUOTE)
"Don't fly anywhere near that big so-and-so; she'll shoot you down."
Although the Americans suffered heavy losses,
the Battle for Santa Cruz forced the Japanese to move northward and away from the island.
On the morning of November 14, South Dakota was about to embark on her wildest adventure yet.
When the Japanese group attacked a field in Guadalcanal Island, Task Force 64 steamed
right towards the attackers, led by Admiral Lee, made up of Enterprise,
battleship Washington, and South Dakota, with a healed Captain Gatch back in command.
But as the sun set, knowing Big-E could not perform nighttime air ops, Commander Lee
commanded the two battleships and four destroyers to look for and destroy the enemy.
Shortly before midnight, around Savo island, the duo of battleships encountered the angered group
of enemy destroyers and cruisers, which quickly unleashed their power and damaged all ships.
As a duo of heavy cruisers and battleship Kirishima closed in for a showdown,
Washington and South Dakota did the same. But as the latter steamed towards them, all electrical
power was lost to a malfunction, leading to a radar error throughout the rest of the fight.
Now, with no way of contacting Washington directly, South Dakota
and her men had no choice but to face the darkness directly,
steaming right towards the Japanese vessels as the enemy fired nearly three dozen torpedoes.
And as the smoke cleared, the American battleship remained unscathed.
But the worst was yet to come.
Now, with South Dakota only 5,000 yards away from the Japanese task force,
the enemy shined their lights upon it and fired mercilessly. While a battleship
versus battleship is a rare occurrence in World War 2, on that fateful day,
this was the reality for Gatch and his men. Despite all their best work,
they could not stop the enemy from scoring 42 hits, causing many casualties and wounded.
South Dakota was severely damaged and in deep trouble.
But this carnage had a silver lining, as the fire and noise from the battleship to
battleship encounter allowed Washington to spot the positions of every ship. And so,
in retribution for their beleaguered comrade, Washington unleashed her main battery,
reducing Kirishima to a ball of flame, while the heavily damaged South Dakota
escaped the battle at full speed, as did most of the other surviving Japanese ships.
As dawn broke in the accorded rendezvous point, Washington's crew was uncertain
of South Dakota's fate after her bold nighttime escape. The hours stretched,
with vigilant eyes scouring the horizon for the battleship's silhouette.
Then, precisely at 9:00 am, the agreed-upon time for the meetup, battered yet undefeated,
South Dakota made her timely appearance, reuniting with Washington, her fellow battleship and savior.
The damage from the encounter that South Dakota suffered was serious enough she had to return
to the mainland for repairs. Once at the Brooklyn Navy Yard, the battleship Gatch
and his crew received plenty of attention from the hero-seeking press and media.
But on the other side of the world, the rapid disappearance of the battleship
after what became the Second Battle of Savo Island caused the Imperial Navy to
believe South Dakota was sunk during that fierce fight. Even further back than that,
Japanese aviators also reported the battleship as lost in the Battle of the Santa Cruz islands.
Because of this mysterious backstory, American naval intelligence chose to
encourage the misinformation, and for a long time, instead of South Dakota,
this now reputable vessel was merely identified as "Battleship X" in dispatches and other official
documents. Throughout the conflict, the Western press referred to the ship as "Old Nameless,"
but to the sailors aboard, those who truly knew her, she was simply dear old "Sodak."
After two months of repairs, Sodak was again ready for sea duty,
this time with a new Captain, Lynde D. McCormick.
In the summer of 1943, she traveled all the way to the Atlantic Theater,
where she joined one of the many Allied efforts to hunt one of the Kriegsmarine's most iconic ships,
the Tirpitz. As the elusive battleship wreaked havoc with convoys on the Murmansk run,
threatening to shut it down altogether, Allied war planning came up with the idea to use the
ultra-fast American navy battleships that had already proved their mettle in the South Pacific
to lure the German vessel into a head to head battle where aircraft could then finish her off.
However, when the plan failed to materialize after two months,
South Dakota had no choice but to head back to the Pacific. There, the battleship returned to a naval
war in which the United States was clearly gaining the upper hand against the Empire.
However, there was still some fighting to be done.
Between mid-November 1943 and June 1944, the ship participated in actions in the
Caroline Islands against a sizable Japanese base at Truk and in support
of Marine landings on the Marianas Islands, mostly providing antiaircraft protection.
During the iconic Mariana's Turkey Shoot, where the Allies accounted for over 400 Japanese planes
in a single day on June 19, 1944, South Dakota was the only major ship that suffered damage,
as a 500-pound bomb hit the captain's quarters and injured over 50 men.
After a refit, the battleship returned to the war,
albeit with some new crewmembers, including Allan Vernon Robinson,
a journalist turned sailor who chronicled South Dakota's final year of operation in World War 2.
In late September, as the Allies attempted to capture each of the Marianas Islands,
Ulithi Island, the easternmost atoll in the chain, was taken virtually without opposition.
However, Peleliu was much more heavily defended, and the struggle required two
of the harshest months for the crew of USS South Dakota. Speaking about the fear and
uncertainty he and his fellow sailors felt, Robinson described it as: [QUOTE]
"You did not always know what the enemy had in mind, and what might start as
small and insignificant may [sic] turn out into something you were most totally unprepared for."
Thankfully, luck remained on South Dakota's side.
From late 1944 on, as the fierce engagements South Dakota's men fought became less frequent,
the battleship served mainly as a carrier escort and provided shore bombardment,
mainly on Okinawa and in the Philippines.
On July 14, 1945, Sodak became the first enemy
warship in nearly a century to fire directly upon the Japanese mainland.
As night fell on August 10, 1945, after finishing a bombardment of Kamaishihad,
the crew had barely survived a kamikaze attack and were ready to spend the rest
of the day relaxing when they were notified of the Hiroshima and Nagasaki
bombs from a few days before. In an essay, Robinson spoke of that iconic day: [QUOTE]
"We expected the war to end suddenly, untrumpeted and without ceremony. For us,
it did that [but] we did not expect it to end when it did. It was 8:55 p.m. on the night of
August 10,1945 that this bad dream came to an end for us. [...]. Shouts, screams
and impromptu celebrations reverberated throughout the ship. It was too good to be true, but it was."
South Dakota was one of the American vessels on Tokyo Bay on September 2,
1945, when Fleet Admiral Chester Nimitz officially accepted the surrender of the Japanese Empire.
By the time the battleship left the bay a few days later, she had traveled
246,970 miles, nearly the same distance from the Earth to the Moon, having claimed
three ships and sixty-four airplanes, an outstanding thirteen Navy battle stars,
and changing the lives of hundreds of the men who lived and served aboard USS South Dakota.
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