For over 50 years now, a small town called Fall River
has been the permanent home for battleship Massachusetts—
the pride of all citizens of the state that gave its name to this honored ship.
It’s thanks to them that this remarkable US Navy memorial was preserved.
NAVAL LEGENDS USS Massachusetts (BB-59)
Massachusetts was one of the last of the Treaty battleship series.
She’s of the South Dakota class.
And these were fairly balanced ships in terms of armament, armor, and speed performance,
which could be created within the Treaty limits.
The outbreak of World War II gave a powerful boost
to the development of shipbuilding in the United States.
Dockyards received orders to build new ships featuring higher speed,
better armament, stronger armor,
and improved maneuverability in order to gain superiority in the naval theatre of war.
However, before the war kicked off,
they had already laid down ships of the so-called “Washington era.”
These two ships, developed while abiding by treaty restrictions,
were a result of numerous compromises
and certainly weren’t as advanced as the latest projects.
But since WWII was happening, the shipyards had to finish their construction,
and do it as quickly as possible.
Massachusetts was built really fast.
Just 34 months after the keel-laying ceremony, the battleship was commissioned.
At that time the Navy’s General Board
was considering two concepts for the battleship.
It could either be a well-armed, but slow moving ship
or a ship that was fast enough, but with weaker artillery.
The design engineers came to a sort of middle ground.
They created a battleship with powerful 16-inch main battery
and was also capable of a decent speed of up to 27 knots.
Plus it didn’t exceed the limit of 35,000 tons.
So this was overall a highly capable design for her time.
SPECIFICATIONS
Length: 207.5 m Beam: 33 m
Draft: almost 9 m Total displacement: 45,216 tons
The main power plant was arranged in echelons across four compartments,
each having two Babcock and Wilcox boilers
and a set of General Electric geared turbines.
Power: 135,000 hp
Armor Main armor belt: 310 mm
Main armored deck: from 146 to 154 mm
The armor on the turrets was 184 to 457 mm thick.
Conning tower: from 102 to 406 mm
Armament
The primary armament consisted of nine Mark 6 guns,
placed in three triple turrets. Caliber: 406 mm.
Dual-Purpose Artillery 10 coaxial Mark 12 guns, caliber 127 mm
Small-Caliber Anti-Aircraft Artillery
6 quadruple Bofors guns, caliber 40 mm
35 single Oerlikon autocannons, caliber 20 mm
Air Group 3 Vought OS2U Kingfisher aircraft
Cruising range: 15,000 miles at 15 knots
In May 1942, USS Massachusetts was commissioned.
Of course, you can’t send a newly commissioned ship into battle immediately.
But there was no time to carry out the trials and conduct full-scale training of the crew.
Participation in Operation Torch served as the training mission for the battleship.
November 8th, 1942, USS Massachusetts makes her combat debut.
This was the day planned for the opening phase of Operation Torch,
during which it was intended to land a force of five infantry
and two armored divisions onto the North African coast.
At that time, the indirect approach had already become
a dominating military strategy in Western countries,
specifically in the USA and Great Britain.
Its main idea is that you shouldn’t attack a powerful enemy head-on,
but sort of act on the flanks, on the periphery, to exhaust its economy,
exhaust its armed forces.
Morocco was part of the French colonial system.
Vichy France had its forces stationed there.
And so our hero, battleship Massachusetts,
took part in these battles near Casablanca.
One of the most important strategic objectives was Casablanca,
where there was both a major sea port and an air base.
Moreover, at the key in the port of Casablanca was the French battleship Jean Bart.
Although she was unfinished, she still had a combat capable quad 15-inch gun turret.
The city itself was also a hard nut to crack.
There were several coastal batteries,
which pretty firmly protected both the entrance of the port
and about 20 miles of surrounding coastal waters.
To neutralize these forces and for the naval gunfire support at landing,
you had a significant force headed by Massachusetts,
which was sent to the Moroccan coast.
Ships maneuvered all night off the coast waiting for the operation to start.
On November 8th, at 6:30 a.m., the ships assumed a combat formation
and headed for Casablanca.
Soon they were detected.
The El Hank battery was the first to open fire at the US naval force.
Jean Bart’s artillery immediately joined the gunfire.
The very first of her shells raised huge columns of water near the American ships.
The cruisers didn’t wait long and opened fire at the harbor of Casablanca,
where the French battleship was berthed.
Along with the allied cruisers, Massachusetts
finally fired her first shots from her 406-mm guns.
Within a short period of time, the American battleship fired
nine salvos at Jean Bart
and made five hits.
And the shells that missed the French battleship
continued on to ruin port facilities
and sink transport vessels in the harbor.
The attacking force got so carried away engaging Jean Bart
that they forgot about their primary task— to block enemy ships
and prevent them from leaving the port.
The commander of the French 2nd Light Squadron noticed this mistake:
he led his ships out to sea and headed eastward
to the landing zone of American troops.
The French squadron began to exchange fire with the US destroyers
that were escorting the landing craft.
The Massachusetts group redirected their guns to the new enemy force.
At 9:18 a.m. the battleship opened fire and immediately hit destroyer Fougueux.
In the heat of the battle, a 194-mm projectile
fired by the El Hank battery hit Massachusetts on the bow;
it struck the main deck’s port side.
Five minutes later, the battleship noticed four incoming torpedoes
just in time to dodge them—one torpedo
passed by just five meters away from her starboard side.
By noon, the battle was gradually reaching its final stage.
With just one shot, Massachusetts knocked out destroyer leader Milan,
and a few minutes later the battleship hit another French destroyer.
The first combat outing for Massachusetts was pretty successful.
Battleship Jean Bart was neutralized;
other enemy ships and coastal batteries were disabled.
And all this was done in just five hours.
In that operation Massachusetts fired off almost all
800 of her armor-piercing shells at the enemy.
They inflicted significant damage on Jean Bart
and a fragment of one of those shells,
which hit the French battleship is kept aboard Massachusetts today as a museum exhibit item.
All in all, the landing operation in Morocco and Algeria was a success.
The separate French units that resisted the Allies were suppressed
by naval artillery and aviation.
By November 11, 1942,
not a single gun could be heard firing on the northern coast of Africa.
Of course, the French didn’t want to fight against the Allies,
but they also didn’t want to be together with the British.
The point is that everybody remembered Operation Catapult,
when the British navy attempted to destroy French ships,
which were also stationed in the ports of Morocco and Algeria.
But it turned out that most of the French forces showed no resistance;
only separate units did, like battleship Jean Bart.
In general, everything went successfully.
Victory was basically achieved even before the start of the landing operation.
The landing of 100,000 troops on the coast of Algeria and Morocco
kicked off a large-scale offensive operation
against Italian-German forces in Northern Africa,
which ended in victory for the Allies in May 1943.
From the coast of Africa, battleship Massachusetts sailed back home.
For several months, she underwent repairs and upgrades in Boston.
The shipyard reinforced the battleship’s anti-aircraft armament
and updated her radar systems.
In February 1943,
Massachusetts passed through the Panama Canal into the Pacific
to take part in fierce battles between the Allied forces
and the Imperial Japanese Navy.
You see,
Massachusetts participated in the war both in the Atlantic and the Pacific Oceans.
She was redeployed back and forth over the course of World War II.
Was she lucky? Well, she traveled from one theatre of war to another.
I cannot say the crew were lucky, as they had to suffer all these hardships;
but in terms of the ship’s combat career, her battle history, yes, she was.
Massachusetts fought both in the Atlantic and the Pacific.
Massachusetts’ battle history in the Pacific campaign began
at the south-west part, New Caledonia.
For month after month, the battleship, along with the main forces,
advanced to the north, covering the landing of troops, escorting convoys,
firing upon coastal positions.
Names like the Solomon Islands, the Gilbert archipelago,
Nauru Island, Tarawa and Kwajalein atolls, Truk.
All these places were not deprived
of the attention of the battleship’s main battery.
In November 1944, Massachusetts participated in the Battle of Leyte Gulf,
after which the Imperial Japanese Navy
lost the capability to engage in significant offensive combat operations.
Then in the spring of 1945, you had Iwo Jima and Okinawa.
By the summer, Massachusetts had approached the Japanese home islands
and was firing at industrial centers where military factories were concentrated.
On August 9th, 1945, the battleship fired her main battery
at metallurgical plants in Kamaishi.
These were the last salvos of 16-inch gunfire of World War II.
Thus, Massachusetts became known for having fired both the first
and the last shots from American 16-inch guns in that war.
During her service in the war, the battleship covered 225,000 miles,
fought 35 battles, sank five enemy ships,
and shot down 18 airplanes.
For her combat merits, Massachusetts was decorated with 11 battle stars.
In 1947, the ship was mothballed and assigned to the reserve.
In the early 60s, the battleship was stricken from the Naval Vessel Register,
and her fortune was determined by the citizens of Massachusetts.
They had warm feelings for “Big Mamie,” as the sailors used to call her.
In 1965, the citizens of the state raised 50,000 dollars,
which gave this WWII veteran a second life as a museum ship.