USS Nevada: The Battleship That Survived Pearl Harbor and the Atomic Tests

On the morning of December 7, 1941, the battleships at Pearl Harbor were caught in one of the most destructive surprise attacks in American history. Ships burned along Battleship Row. Aircraft circled overhead. Smoke reduced visibility, communications broke down and sailors fought fires while ammunition detonated around them.

Inside that chaos, one battleship began to move.

USS Nevada, designated BB-36, raised steam, pulled away from its berth and attempted to reach the open sea. It was the only American battleship to get underway during the attack.

The escape did not succeed. Japanese aircraft concentrated on the moving ship, and accumulating damage forced Nevada’s crew to ground her near Hospital Point rather than risk sinking in the harbor channel.

That morning alone would have secured Nevada a place in U.S. naval history. Yet Pearl Harbor was only one part of an extraordinary career. After being salvaged and extensively rebuilt, the battleship returned to combat. Its guns supported operations in Alaska, Normandy, southern France, Iwo Jima and Okinawa.

When the war ended, Nevada was considered too old and battle-worn for the postwar fleet. The Navy selected it for Operation Crossroads, the 1946 atomic tests at Bikini Atoll. The ship remained afloat after both an airburst and an underwater nuclear detonation.

USS Nevada was not indestructible. No warship was. Its survival resulted from design, damage control, salvage work, industrial capacity and the decisions of thousands of sailors and shipyard workers. That makes its history more impressive than the legend of an “unsinkable battleship.”

A Battleship Built Around a New Idea

Nevada was laid down in 1912, launched in 1914 and commissioned on March 11, 1916. Although it belonged to the generation of battleships developed before the United States entered World War I, its design represented an important step toward the American battleships of the future.

The ship carried ten 14-inch guns in four main turrets: two triple-gun turrets and two twin-gun turrets. Consolidating the weapons into fewer turrets allowed designers to protect the main battery while reducing the amount of armored structure required.

Nevada also used oil rather than coal as its primary boiler fuel. Oil produced operational advantages, including easier refueling, reduced manpower requirements and a greater practical cruising radius.

Its most influential feature was the “all-or-nothing” armor principle. Earlier battleships often distributed armor of varying thickness across large portions of the ship. Nevada instead concentrated its heaviest protection around the areas most essential to survival, including ammunition magazines and machinery spaces. Less critical sections received comparatively little armor.

This did not make the battleship invulnerable. It reflected a calculated engineering decision: armor heavy enough to matter should protect the systems whose destruction could immediately disable or destroy the ship.

Nevada underwent a major modernization between 1927 and 1930. Changes included improved protection, additional deck armor, torpedo-defense bulges and a substantially altered superstructure. Even after that work, however, the battleship remained a product of an earlier naval era when it entered Pearl Harbor in 1941.

USS Nevada’s service connected two world wars and carried the battleship from Pearl Harbor to Alaska, Normandy, southern France, Iwo Jima, Okinawa and Bikini Atoll.

Pearl Harbor: The Battleship That Moved

Nevada was moored near the northeastern end of Battleship Row on December 7, 1941. Unlike several battleships positioned in pairs, it did not have another battleship tied alongside it. That location gave the crew a possible path into the channel.

The ship was not fully prepared to sail. Many members of the crew were ashore, and only one boiler was initially operating. Nevertheless, officers and sailors responded rapidly as the attack developed.

Nevada’s antiaircraft crews opened fire. Engineering personnel raised additional steam, while the ship’s leaders prepared to move the battleship away from its berth.

Before Nevada could escape, a Japanese aerial torpedo struck its port bow. Flooding produced a list, but counterflooding helped keep the ship sufficiently level to move. At approximately 8:40 a.m., with smoke rising from Battleship Row, Nevada began its run toward the harbor entrance.

The sight mattered. Sailors across the harbor could see an American battleship moving under its own power while the attack continued.

It also made Nevada an obvious target.

During the second wave, Japanese dive-bombers attacked the moving battleship. Nevada’s official action report recorded at least six bomb hits in addition to the earlier torpedo strike. Fires spread through forward areas, and flooding became increasingly difficult to control.

The danger extended beyond the ship. If Nevada sank in the narrow channel, it could interfere with access to Pearl Harbor. The crew therefore grounded the battleship off Hospital Point.

The maneuver saved the channel, but it did not erase the human cost. Sixty members of Nevada’s crew were killed during the attack, and 109 were wounded.

Among the men recognized for exceptional conduct were Machinist Donald Kirby Ross and Chief Boatswain Edwin Joseph Hill. Ross continued directing operations in the forward dynamo room despite smoke, heat and exhaustion. Hill helped release the ship from its moorings and was later killed while attempting to drop anchor. Both received the Medal of Honor.

Nevada’s movement is sometimes described as an escape from Pearl Harbor. More accurately, it was an attempted sortie that ended in a deliberate grounding after the ship suffered severe damage. The distinction does not reduce the crew’s achievement. It explains it.

USS Nevada became the only battleship to get underway during the attack on Pearl Harbor, but accumulating torpedo and bomb damage forced the crew to ground it near Hospital Point.

Salvage Before Reconstruction

Nevada settled into shallow water rather than disappearing into the depths of the harbor. That made recovery possible, but salvage remained a hazardous and complex engineering operation.

Crews had to remove water, repair openings, restore stability and make the ship safe enough to move. The battleship was refloated in February 1942 and entered dry dock at Pearl Harbor for temporary repairs.

It then traveled to the Puget Sound Navy Yard in Washington for a much more extensive reconstruction.

By this stage of the war, the threat to a battleship had changed. Aircraft posed an immediate danger, and ships required stronger antiaircraft batteries, improved fire control and better protection against fragments and near misses.

Nevada emerged with a dramatically different appearance. Its cage masts were gone. A modern tower superstructure replaced much of the older arrangement. The ship received improved fire-control equipment, a greatly strengthened antiaircraft battery and dual-purpose secondary guns capable of engaging both surface and aerial targets.

Its original 14-inch main battery remained. The result was not a new battleship, but a rebuilt veteran adapted to a war its original designers could not have fully anticipated.

That transformation is central to Nevada’s story. The ship’s return was not simply the result of strong armor. American salvage specialists recovered it, naval architects revised it, shipyard workers reconstructed it and a new crew brought it back into combat.

Nevada’s post-Pearl Harbor reconstruction replaced its cage masts, improved fire control and greatly strengthened its secondary and antiaircraft armament.

From Alaska to the Atlantic

Nevada returned to combat in 1943 and supported the recapture of Attu in the Aleutian Islands. Its large guns were used for shore bombardment, a role that became increasingly important as Allied forces approached fortified coastlines.

The battleship later crossed the Atlantic and prepared for Operation Overlord.

On June 6, 1944, Nevada supported the Allied landings in Normandy. Positioned off Utah Beach, it fired on German defenses, artillery positions and targets threatening troops moving inland.

Naval gunfire support demanded more than simply firing large shells toward shore. Observers, spotters and fire-control teams had to identify targets, communicate corrections and coordinate with forces operating near the impact area. Weather, smoke, coastal terrain and incomplete information made the work difficult.

Nevada later supported operations around Cherbourg, where German coastal batteries were capable of returning heavy fire. It then moved to the Mediterranean and participated in Operation Dragoon, the Allied invasion of southern France in August 1944.

During that campaign, Nevada’s 14-inch guns engaged German coastal defenses, including fortified positions around Toulon.

A battleship designed before World War I had now supported a major amphibious landing in northern France and another on the Mediterranean coast. But the ship’s war was still not finished.

Back to the Pacific

After maintenance and the replacement of worn gun barrels, Nevada returned to the Pacific.

In February 1945, it bombarded Japanese defenses on Iwo Jima. The island’s fortified positions were difficult to destroy because many were concealed, reinforced or connected through underground systems. Naval bombardment could damage defenses and support troops ashore, but it could not make the landing effortless.

Nevada next supported the invasion of Okinawa. On March 27, 1945, a kamikaze struck the battleship near one of its main turrets. The attack killed 11 men and wounded dozens more, but Nevada remained operational.

Only days later, Japanese coastal gunfire struck the ship and caused additional casualties.

The battleship continued supporting the campaign. Its endurance should not be mistaken for immunity from damage. Nevada survived because its structure absorbed punishment, its crew controlled fires and flooding, and repair teams kept essential systems functioning.

By the end of World War II, the ship had earned seven battle stars for its wartime service.

The Atomic Target

The war ended before Nevada could participate in further planned operations against Japan. At more than 30 years old, the battleship was obsolete compared with newer warships and no longer worth a complete peacetime restoration.

Its final assignment was as a target.

Operation Crossroads was organized to study how atomic weapons affected naval forces. A large target fleet was assembled at Bikini Atoll in the Marshall Islands, including American vessels and captured ships.

For Test Able, Nevada was selected as the principal aiming point and painted a conspicuous reddish orange so the bomber crew could identify it from the air.

On July 1, 1946, a B-29 released the atomic weapon over the target fleet. The bomb missed Nevada by a considerable distance and detonated above another part of the formation. Five ships sank as a result of the test, while many others suffered damage. Nevada remained afloat.

Test Baker followed on July 25. This time, the weapon detonated approximately 90 feet underwater. The blast lifted an immense column of water and radioactive material that descended across the target vessels.

Nevada survived the second detonation, but “survived” requires qualification. It remained afloat; it did not emerge unharmed. The ship had suffered further damage and serious radioactive contamination.

Operation Crossroads revealed a problem that blast measurements alone could not solve. A ship might remain structurally afloat yet become extremely difficult—or unsafe—to inspect, decontaminate and return to service.

Painted reddish orange as the aiming point for Test Able, USS Nevada remained afloat after both Operation Crossroads detonations but suffered extensive damage and radioactive contamination.

The Battleship’s Final Sinking

Nevada returned to Pearl Harbor after the tests and was decommissioned on August 29, 1946.

The Navy continued examining the contaminated ship before deciding on its final disposal. On July 31, 1948, Nevada was taken into deep water southwest of Pearl Harbor and used for a final weapons test.

Gunfire, rockets, bombs and torpedoes inflicted cumulative damage. The old battleship finally sank beneath the Pacific.

Popular retellings often describe the ship as resisting every attempt to sink it until one final torpedo delivered the decisive blow. That summary captures the drama but can obscure the reality. Nevada had already endured wartime damage, two nuclear tests, years of service and repeated target attacks. Its final loss resulted from accumulated damage during a deliberate sinking exercise—not supernatural invulnerability.

In 2020, a joint expedition located the wreck approximately 65 nautical miles southwest of Pearl Harbor at a depth of about 15,400 feet. Imagery showed the ship resting in multiple sections, its final condition preserving evidence of both wartime service and weapons testing.

What USS Nevada’s Survival Actually Means

Nevada’s history is sometimes reduced to a list of disasters it survived: Pearl Harbor, kamikaze attack, coastal gunfire and two atomic detonations.

But the deeper story is about systems and people.

The battleship’s compartmentation, concentrated armor and reserve stability influenced how it responded to damage. Damage-control teams fought flooding and fire. Salvage crews raised a ship that had settled into Pearl Harbor. Shipyard workers transformed an aging battleship into a more useful bombardment and antiaircraft platform. Fire-control teams then used its heavy guns in support of soldiers and Marines on distant shores.

Even Operation Crossroads complicated the meaning of survival. Remaining afloat did not necessarily mean a ship could still fight, be safely occupied or be economically repaired. Nuclear contamination introduced a danger that conventional assessments of armor and flooding were poorly prepared to address.

Nevada was never truly unsinkable. Its record is more meaningful because it was a machine with limits—kept in service by engineering, industrial work and human decisions.

A Ship Between Naval Eras

When Nevada entered service in 1916, battleships represented the center of naval power. Their heavy guns and armor embodied the major-fleet battle that strategists expected to decide wars at sea.

By 1941, carrier aircraft had demonstrated that battleships could be attacked even inside a defended harbor. During the later war, Nevada proved valuable primarily as a platform for antiaircraft defense and shore bombardment rather than as a participant in a traditional battleship duel.

Then, in 1946, the ship became part of an experiment designed to examine whether concentrated fleets could survive atomic warfare.

Few vessels connected these eras so clearly.

Nevada began as an engineering landmark, suffered severe damage in the attack that brought the United States into World War II, returned to support amphibious warfare in two oceans and ended as a test subject at the beginning of the nuclear age.

The battleship’s most important legacy is therefore not that it could not be sunk. It is that the ship, its crew and the industrial system behind them repeatedly adapted to forms of warfare that had changed beyond what Nevada’s original designers could have imagined.

HISTORICAL NOTE

“Survived” in this article means that USS Nevada remained afloat after an event. It does not mean the ship escaped without damage or remained fully operational. Nevada was severely damaged at Pearl Harbor and was damaged and contaminated during Operation Crossroads. It was deliberately sunk during weapons testing in 1948.

SOURCES AND FURTHER READING

Naval History and Heritage Command. “Nevada II (Battleship No. 36).” Dictionary of American Naval Fighting Ships.

Naval History and Heritage Command. “USS Nevada (BB-36) Action Report.” World War II Pearl Harbor Attack Action Reports.

Naval History and Heritage Command. “Operation Crossroads.”

National Park Service, Pearl Harbor National Memorial. “Battleship Row.”

Bureau of Yards and Docks. Building the Navy’s Bases in World War II.

Wallin, Homer N. Pearl Harbor: Why, How, Fleet Salvage and Final Appraisal. U.S. Government Printing Office, 1968.

Brennan, Michael L., et al. “Discovery and Initial Documentation of USS Nevada (BB-36).” Heritage Science, 2022.

EDITORIAL AND IMAGE DISCLOSURE

This article was prepared from historical records and established secondary sources. Dates, damage reports and operational claims were checked against U.S. Navy, National Park Service and scholarly material.

Some accompanying illustrations may be AI-assisted historical reconstructions. They are included to explain documented events and should not be interpreted as original photographs. Reconstructed scenes do not claim exact facial likenesses or undocumented viewpoints.