USS Alabama - Mobile, Alabama

April 21

BATTLESHIP MEMORIAL PARK -

Battleship Memorial Park, located in Mobile, Alabama, welcomes hundreds of thousands of visitors from around the world each year. These guests come to tour the Park and learn about the men who served aboard the USS ALABAMA and USS DRUM, our nation’s military history, and the price paid for freedom.

USS Alabama -

On February 1, 1940, as the keel was laid at the Norfolk Navy Yard in Portsmouth, Virginia, Battleship USS ALABAMA (BB-60) had a remarkable career. She was the fourth and final member of the South Dakota class of fast battleships built for the United States Navy in the 1940s.

After entering service, Alabama was briefly deployed to strengthen the British Home Fleet, tasked with protecting convoys to the Soviet Union. In 1943, she was transferred to the Pacific for operations against Japan; the first of these was the Gilbert and Marshall Islands campaign that began in November of that year.

While operating in the Pacific, she served primarily as an escort for the fast carrier task force to protect the aircraft carriers from surface and air attacks. She also frequently bombarded Japanese positions in support of amphibious assaults. She took part in the Mariana and Palau Islands campaign in June–September and the Philippines campaign in October–December. After a refit in early 1945, she returned to the fleet for operations during the Battle of Okinawa and the series of attacks on the Japanese mainland in July and August, including several bombardments of coastal industrial targets.

Alabama assisted in Operation Magic Carpet after the war, carrying some 700 men home from the former war zone. She was decommissioned in 1947 and assigned to the Pacific Reserve Fleet, where she remained until 1962, when she was stricken from the Naval Vessel Register.

Home to a crew of 2,500 courageous Americans, this 45,000-ton war machine’s WWII adventure culminated with BB-60 leading the American Fleet into Tokyo Bay on September 5, 1945. Nine Battle Stars for meritorious service were awarded the “Mighty A” during her brief three-year tenure as the “Heroine of the Pacific.”

USS Drum Submarine -

USS Drum (SS-228) is a Gato-class submarine of the United States Navy, the first Navy ship named after the drum, a type of fish. Drum is a museum ship in Mobile, Alabama, at Battleship Memorial Park.

Drum was the twelfth of the Gato class but was the first completed and the first to enter combat in World War II. She is the oldest of her class, and she is still in existence.

Drum received 12 battle stars for her World War II service. She is credited with sinking 15 ships and 80,580 tons of enemy shipping, the eighth highest of all US submarines in total Japanese tonnage sunk.

Drum was laid down on 11 September 1940 at Portsmouth Naval Shipyard in Kittery, Maine. She was launched on 12 May 1941

BATTLESHIP MEMORIAL PARK -

2703 Battleship Parkway, Mobile, Alabama

Quick links: