Class: South Dakota
Type: Battleship
Launched: February 16, 1942
At: Norfolk Navy Yard, Portsmouth, Virginia
Commissioned: August 16, 1942
Length: 680 feet
Beam: 108 feet
Draft: 36 feet
Displacement: 35,000 tons
Armament: Nine 16-inch/45 caliber, twenty 5-inch/38 caliber, forty-eight 40mm and fifty-two 20mm guns
Address:
USS Alabama Battleship Memorial Park
2703 Battleship Parkway, P.O. Box 65
Mobile, AL 36601
800 GANGWAY/800 426-4929
Fax: (251) 433-2777
MG Janet L. Cobb, USA (Ret.), Executive Director
Email: Jcobb@ussalabama.com
http://www.ussalabama.com
Facebook: USS ALABAMA Battleship Memorial Park
Twitter: @USS_ALABAMA
Instagram: theussalabama
Latitude: 30.682048321, Longitude: -88.0143906802
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USS Alabama began her combat service augmenting the British Fleet protecting convoys on the “Murmansk Run” from England through the North Sea to Russia against German warships and aircraft. The ship transferred to the Pacific Fleet in August 1943, and earned 9 battle stars providing gunfire support for amphibious assaults on Japanese-held islands and protecting carrier task forces from air and surface attack. Alabama was credited with shooting down 22 Japanese planes. Her radar was the first to detect enemy bombers in the Battle of the Philippine Sea, at the unprecedented range of 190 miles. This warning enabled U.S. fighters and anti-aircraft gunners to destroy over 400 Japanese planes. Decommissioned in 1947, Alabama was “mothballed” in Bremerton, Washington until 1964, when she was transferred to the State of Alabama and towed 5,600 miles to become a memorial in Mobile.
The Park’s artifact collection contains representative Army, Navy, Air Force, Marine and Coast Guard aircraft from before World War II through the Persian Gulf War. Included are a Mach 3+ A-12 Blackbird, the submarine Drum, tanks and artillery. Alabama conducts youth group overnight encampments.
USS Alabama is a National Historic Landmark.
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