USS Nevada, BB-36

USS Nevada, BB-36. Awarded Seven Battle Stars for World War II Service. Laid down on 4 November 1912 by the Fore River Shipbuilding Company at Quincy, Massachusetts, USS Nevada launched on 11 July 1914. With Capt William S. Sims in command, Nevada commissioned on 11 March 1916, joined the Atlantic Fleet two months later, and operated along the east coast of the United States and in the Caribbean until the United States entered World War I. Nevada trained gunners out of Norfolk for several months then operated in and around the North Sea until war's end. , , Nevada served in both Atlantic and Pacific Fleets in the period between the wars. Modernized at Norfolk, she joined the Pacific Fleet in early 1930. At Pearl Harbor on 7 December 1941, Nevada moored singly and thus could maneuver under the Japanese attack, whereas the other eight battleships present could not. Struck by one torpedo and at least two bombs from the Japanese attackers, she still managed to get underway, only to be struck again. She avoided a channel-closing sinking by deliberately beaching at Hospital Point, an action that permitted her to be refloated some two months later and repaired. Modernized a second time, Nevada sailed for British waters in April 1944 to become one of three U.S. battleships in the D-Day armada. Force O Assault Convoy Commander, Captain Lorenzo S. Sabin, embarked on an infantry landing craft (LCI) waiting to assault Omaha Beach, recalls Nevada's D-Day bombardment thus: , , ... as I watched her big 14-inch rifles belching forth fire and smoke, my mind went back two and a half years to Pearl Harbor... as the Nevada floundered helplessly in the channel while taking a terrible mauling from the bombs of Japanese aircraft. The Japanese had good reason to believe that they had scratched her from any other combat usefulness. But here she was, halfway around the world from Pearl Harbor, with her battle ensign again proudly flying and her guns again roaring.... , , From 6 to 17 June, and again on 25 June, her massive guns hammered the defensive positions on the Cherbourg Peninsula and ranged deep inland to interdict German concentrations and counterattacks. Though German shore batteries often bracketed the great battleship, they failed to interrupt her accurate fire. On her return to the Pacific Theater, she replicated at Iwo Jima and Okinawa the same resolve and service she had displayed at Normandy. After brief occupation duty at Tokyo Bay, Nevada was assigned as a target ship for the atomic-bomb test at Bikini Atoll. Characteristically impervious, she survived the test to decommission at Pearl Harbor on 29 August 1946. , , In memory of the officers and crew of USS Washington (BB-56) She fought with Nevada in the Pacific Fleet and took part in every major naval battle in the Pacific Theater, sank the Japanese battleship Kirishima in a one-on-one encounter, and received fifteen battle stars. Earl L. Childers served aboard Washington during this period. Given by Earl L. Childers and Ethel Y. Childers.