75 Years Ago: America's Last Battleship is Launched

By M.C. Farrington
HRNM Historian

The launching invitation for USS Wisconsin. (Robert M. Cieri via Navsource.org)

"Remember Pearl Harbor" is a common refrain on December 7, and remembrances of that tragic day reverberate at this time each year. While the need to remember those who perished and the lessons that have been learned since then is beyond question, let the fact not be lost among the yearly recitations that the national leadership had not been asleep at the wheel.  Throughout the decade prior to the attack, President Franklin Delano Roosevelt, supported by staunch allies in Congress such as John C. Stennis, had produced the road map and the funding that would deliver final victory over the perpetrators of the Pearl Harbor attacks.  American industry was equally up to the task to follow the roadmap and judiciously use those funds to produce warships superior to those of the Axis, as exemplified by the launch of USS Wisconsin (BB 64) into the Delaware River on December 7, 1943.  

USS Wisconsin (BB-64) being prepared for launching on December 4, 1943. (Naval History and Heritage Command image)

It had been exactly two years since a surprise attack almost neutralized the American battleships of the Pacific theater, but thanks to the foresightedness of America's leadership and the nation's unmatched economic power, the last of the four Iowa-class battleships, the most capable produced by any nation, was launched that day from Philadelphia Naval Shipyard, the same yard that had produced the Iowa-class battleship New Jersey (BB 62). 

Mrs. Madge Goodland, sponsor of the battleship Wisconsin and wife of Wisconsin governor Walter S. Goodland, christens the vessel. (Dale Hargrave via Navsource.org)

Over 40,000 tons of steel shaped for speed slides down the ways at Philadelphia Naval Shipyard on December 7, 1943. (Scott Koen via Navsource .org)

After having commissioned no new battleships in over a decade and a half, America was late to rearm after the naval treaties forged in the wake of World War I began unraveling during the early-1930s, but the designs that took shape were unquestionably among the best.  Begun in 1937 and launched in June 1940, the battleship North Carolina (BB 55) marked the emergence of 10 fast battleships, among three separate classes, that were built before and during the Second World War, with Wisconsin being the last, completed in a record-breaking 39 months.  She would be commissioned on  April 16, 1944.

Wisconsin floats free after

The final two battleships of the Iowa class, USS Illinois (BB 65), being built at Philadelphia Naval Shipyard, and USS Kentucky (BB 66), at Norfolk Naval Shipyard, were never completed, yet Kentucky, which was complete enough to launch in 1950, came in handy after Wisconsin's bow was severely damaged in a collision in May 1956, after which Kentucky's bow was grafted onto Wisconsin.   

Seen here on January 20, 2001, USS Wisconsin (BB 64) moved into her current berth in downtown Norfolk on December 7, 2000 after nearly $10 million in preparatory costs.  After the completion of her permanent pierside support structures such as her main gangway (center of photo, seen here under construction) leading from the adjacent Nauticus building, the decommissioned battleship opened to the public on April 16, 2001. (Gunner's Mate 1st Class Thomas J. Lowney/ Defense Visual Information Archive)

The days of the battleship are long gone, but their legacy is far from forgotten.  Wisconsin, last of a proud class of warships, home to generations of Sailors and a veteran of some of the U.S. Navy's fiercest fleet actions from World War II to the Gulf War, arrived at her current home on the Norfolk, Virginia waterfront on Pearl Harbor Day 2000, and today draws visitors year-round to Nauticus, the National Maritime Center, which is also home to the Hampton Roads Naval Museum.