The USS
Alabama (BB-60) is a retired WWII battleship, now preserved as a museum ship in Mobile Bay, Alabama.
Photography and scanning Dave Evar
dave.speeking from Cristobal, Panama while the
Alabama passed through the Panama Canal on her way to her new home in Mobile Bay, Alabama in Aug-Sept 1964. Camera - Minolta SR-7. Editing by Paul Sager using Lightroom6.
USS Alabama On 1 June 1962,
Alabama was stricken from the Naval Vessel Register for disposal. The State of Alabama passed a bill to establish the "USS Alabama Battleship Commission" with a view toward preserving the battleship as a museum ship. Governor George Wallace signed the law on 12 September 1963, and the commission set about raising funds to acquire the ship; ultimately around $800,000 was raised, of which an eighth came from children in the state, the rest coming primarily from corporate donations.
USS Alabama On 16 June 1964, the Navy awarded the ship to her namesake state, with a provision that the Navy would retain the ability to recall the ship to service in the event of an emergency. She was towed from Seattle to Mobile via the Panama Canal, and opened as a museum ship on 9 January 1965.
USS Alabama Alabama was commissioned in August 1942, served in both the Altantic and Pacific theaters, earning 12 battle stars in WWII. She was decommissioned on 9 January 1947 at the Naval Station in Seattle and assigned to the Pacific Reserve Fleet, stationed in Bremerton, Washington.
USS AlabamaAlabama assisted in Operation Magic Carpet after the war, carrying some 700 men home from the former war zone. At the end of the war, over eight million American military personnel needed to be repatriated from the European, Pacific, and Asian theaters. Beginning in October 1945, over 370 navy ships were used for repatriation duties in the Pacific.
USS Alabama Alabama was declared a National Historic Landmark in 1986. During her career as a museum ship,
Alabama has been used as a set for a number of movies including
Under Siege in 1992 and
USS Indianapolis: Men of Courage in 2016.
USS AlabamaWhen
Alabama arrived to her new home in Mobile, the channel in Mobile Bay to her permanent berth had not yet been completed, and she had to wait until the end of the month before dredging work was finished. Once the ship was moored in her berth, work began to prepare the ship for visitors, including sandblasting painted surfaces, applying primer, and then re-painting the entire ship. These images are from before she opened as a museum in January 1965.
USS Alabama The four ships of the
South Dakota class were:
South Dakota,
Indiana,
Massachusetts, and
Alabama. The ships can be visually distinguished from the earlier vessels by their single funnel, compared to twin funnels in the
North Carolinas. All four ships of the
South Dakota class were retired shortly after World War II;
South Dakota and
Indiana were scrapped in the 1960s, Massachusetts and Alabama were retained as museum ships.
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