Veterans Honor USS Washington (BB-56) The Ship that "Sank More Combat Tonnage than any other U.S. Battleship" By Rick Striner and Mark Hacala, US Navy Memorial Foundation

While the days of great battleship duels on the high sea have faded into memory, the pride of the battleship Sailor remains strong and vivid. That pride shone brightly as seventy-five veterans, family, and friends of USS Washington (BB-56) gathered at the U.S. Navy Memorial on May 24 to dedicate a commemorative plaque to the last American battleship to sink an enemy battleship in sea combat. Veterans of USS Washington said that the placement of the commemorative plaque at the U.S. Navy Memorial provides long-overdue recognition to the wartime achievements of the ship and its crew. John A. Brown, Executive Director of the USS Washington Reunion Group, Inc., believes that the ship has not been sufficiently recognized, but adds that "we will not give up." Brown, whose highest wartime rating was shipfitter second class, came aboard Washington on January 13, 1942 in the Gulf of Mexico and left on September 30, 1945 at San Pedro, CA. His scariest moment aboard the ship. he recalls, was "at the Third Battle of Savo Island, with fourteen enemy ships firing at us and they missed." Howard Wright - a Vietnam Era Army veteran who serves as President of USS Washington BB-56 Associate Unit, Inc., a group of descendants of Washington veterans - says that "I have dedicated the rest of my life to keeping the memories of the ship and the men who sailed on her (because] the men of the Washington never received the credit that is due them." USS Washington was launched on June 1, 1940 and commissioned on May 15, 1941. After service with the British Home Fleet early in 1942, Washington sailed for the Pacific where she fought at Guadalcanal, sinking the Japanese battleship Kirishima in a classic ship-to-ship duel off Savo Island. Washington was the only American battleship to sink an enemy battleship unassisted. During the course of World War II. Washington steamed 289,609 miles and sank more combat tonnage than any other American battleship. The ship's crew earned fifteen battle stars for service in World War II. She was struck from the Navy list in 1960. Amazingly. Washington emerged from the war completely unscathed--the ship was never hit and never lost a man to the enemy. Perhaps Washington's extraordinary good luck has been a factor in the relative lack of publicity about the ship's even more remarkable achievements. Howard Wright believes that an additional factor might also have been involved: "At the end of the war:' he remarked, ships like Washington "were pushed out of the picture by the new Iowa Class battleships. After the war, it was still the bigger and newest." When Washington was scrapped, some of its foot-thick steel armor was sold to the Brookhaven National Laboratory in New York, where it was used to protect scientists from radioactive particles. Segments of the hull were lined up to create a steel barrier twenty feet thick. "It would be unbelievably expensive to buy steel of this thickness today:' said engineer Bob Marascia of the Brookhaven Laboratory recently. USS Washington is remembered with great devotion by its veterans as "the pride of the Navy." Chief Gunner's Mate Billy Bryant, who composed a poem to the ship in 1993, looked back upon Washington this way: Maybe it was God's will To put that horseshoe in her keel She earned all those fifteen stars Riding on Tojo's heels.

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