USS Utah

1941

Ford Island west side, misidentified as a carrier Location: Pearl Harbor, Ford Island (west side), Hawaii · Coordinates: 21.37°N 157.96°W · Casualties: 58 · Survivors: 461 · Depth: 11 m · Cause: aerial attack — Hit by two Japanese aerial torpedoes on the morning of 7 December 1941. Japanese pilots mis-identified her low profile as an active aircraft carrier despite her target-ship conversion. She capsized in eleven minutes. · Fate: shallow water · memorial · Type: target ship · former battleship · Tonnage: 21,825 tons · Crew: 519 · Flag: United States · Launched: 1909 American battleship of 1909, by 1941 a radio-controlled target ship. Mis-identified by Japanese pilots as an active aircraft carrier on the morning of 7 December 1941 and hit by two torpedoes; she capsized in eleven minutes. 58 dead, four Medal of Honor citations awarded for men who refused to abandon trapped shipmates. The wreck was never raised, and the Utah Memorial on Ford Island is the quieter twin of Arizona's marble rectangle. The Vessel USS Utah (AG-16), originally commissioned as USS Utah (BB-31), was a Florida-class pre-dreadnought battleship of the United States Navy, commissioned at the New York Shipbuilding Company in Camden, New Jersey, on 31 August 1911. She was 159 metres long, 23,033 tons standard displacement as originally commissioned, and armed with ten 12-inch guns in five twin turrets. She was one of the two Florida-class battleships, the American answer to the British Bellerophon-class dreadnoughts of 1909-1910. Her career followed a progression characteristic of older American battleships of her generation. She served as a first-line battleship from 1911 through the interwar period; was demilitarised under the provisions of the London Naval Treaty of 1930; was converted to a radio-controlled target ship in 1931 (her main battery removed, her hull strengthened to absorb practice bombs and torpedo hits, her designation changed from BB-31 to AG-16); and served as a training asset for Pacific Fleet aviation practice through the 1930s. By 1941 she was, at 30 years of age, the oldest American battleship-hull in active service (though she had ceased to be classed as a battleship a decade earlier). Her specific role was as a target-vessel for practice aerial bombing and for gunnery training. Her upper decks had been reinforced with timber baulks and sandbags to absorb practice bomb impacts. She carried a skeleton crew of approximately 500. The Disaster USS Utah listed to port within 90 seconds of the first torpedo strike. Her list was not gradual; the absence of the original torpedo-protection system and the compromises in her internal subdivision following her 1931 conversion made her particularly vulnerable to sequential flooding. By 08:08 she was at 40 degrees of list. At 08:12 she capsized onto her port side. Among her crew casualties was Chief Warrant Officer Peter Tomich, the engineering officer on watch at the moment of the attack. Tomich remained in the engine room as his ship capsized, specifically to keep the auxiliary steam systems running to allow crew members in the lower compartments to escape through the bilge keels as the ship rolled. His decision cost him his life but is credited with the survival of several dozen crew members who might otherwise have been trapped. Tomich was posthumously awarded the Medal of Honor for his conduct. USS Utah sank at 08:15 on 7 December 1941, approximately 14 minutes after the first torpedo strike. Of her 558 crew aboard at the moment of the attack, 58 died. 500 survived, many by clambering along her exposed starboard hull as she capsized and being picked up by launches from the nearby USS Raleigh. The relatively low death toll (compared to USS Arizona or USS Oklahoma) reflected Utah's reduced operational status: she carried approximately one-third the crew of a comparably-sized fleet battleship, and most of her crew were on the upper decks rather than in lower compartments w