This Battleship Was Slammed by Three Kamikazes and Kept Fighting

This warship survived the attack at Pearl Harbor and went on to attack Imperial Japan. Here is the story of this vaunted battlewagon.Not every battleship attacked at Pearl Harbor was badly damaged.
USS Maryland escaped virtually unscathed and served with the Pacific Fleet as the tide of war turned against the Japanese. Built to destroy enemy battleships, Maryland supported U.S. Navy operations with escort missions and shore bombardment through the end of the war, eventually finding the opportunity to engage Japanese warships in surface combat.

In October 1944, Maryland and five other battleships (West Virginia, California, Tennessee, Mississippi, and Pennsylvania) were tasked with shore bombardment and escort of Leyte island in the Philippines. Warned by recon aircraft that a Japanese force was approaching, the American battleship took up a position in the Surigao Strait, crossing the “T” of the oncoming Japanese fleet. Led by the battleship Yamashiro, the Japanese ships sailed right into the American trap and came under withering fire from the American ships. Three of the U.S. battleships possessed modern radar arrays, and quickly found the range to Yamashiro. Maryland had an older array but nonetheless managed to straddle Yamashiro with several salvos. Yamashiro suffered badly from the brutal shelling and sank following a torpedo attack. Maryland continued with her shore bombardment duties for the rest of the war. She was hit by three kamikazes, the first and third causing serious damage. In early April 1945, Maryland was assigned to shore bombardment off Okinawa when word came that a Japanese task force, led by the battleship Yamato, had left port. Maryland, along with Colorado, West Virginia, Tennessee, Idaho, and New Mexico was detailed to destroy Yamato if she survived air attacks along the way. Fortunately, the air attacks succeeded. Although the U.S. squadron would likely have destroyed Yamato with concentrated fire, the newer, larger, and faster Japanese battleship would have exacted an awfully destructive toll on the U.S. battleline.


After the war, Maryland and her four sisters were placed in reserve, and not finally disposed of until 1959. It is unfortunate that a more serious effort was not made for her preservation since she was the only survivor of the Pearl Harbor attack to remain in substantially original condition (California, Tennessee, and West Virginia were transformed by wartime reconstruction). Surely the state of Maryland (a state with deep, longstanding naval traditions) could have made a more aggressive effort to preserve this artifact of the superdreadnought era.