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USS Oklahoma (BB-37) was a Nevada-class battleship built by the New York Shipbuilding Corporation for the United States Navy, notable for being the first American class of oil-burning dreadnoughts.

Oklahoma after her modernization, passing Alcatraz

  USS Oklahoma wearing experimental camouflage, circa 1917

 Commissioned in 1916, the ship served in World War I as a part of Battleship Division Six, protecting Allied convoys on their way across the Atlantic. After the war, she served in both the United States Battle Fleet and Scouting FleetOklahoma was modernized between 1927 and 1929. In 1936, she rescued American citizens and refugees from the Spanish Civil War. On returning to the West Coast in August of the same year, Oklahoma spent the rest of her service in the Pacific.

On 7 December 1941, during the Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor, several torpedoes from torpedo bombers hit the Oklahoma‘s hull and the ship capsized. A total of 429 crew died; survivors jumped off the ship 50 feet (15 m) into burning oil on water or crawled across mooring lines that connected Oklahoma and Maryland. Some sailors inside escaped when rescuers drilled holes and opened hatches to rescue them. The ship was salvaged in 1943. Unlike most of the other battleships that were recovered following Pearl Harbor, Oklahoma was too damaged to return to duty. Her wreck was eventually stripped of her remaining armament and superstructure before being sold for scrap in 1946. The hulk sank in a storm while being towed from Oahu, Hawaii, to a breakers yard in San Francisco Bay in 1947


http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/USS_Oklahoma_(BB-37)

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