As the peaceful dawn of December 7, 1941, broke at Pearl Harbor, the USS Maryland (BB-46) was moored along with Battleship Row, berthed beside her sister, the USS Oklahoma. A few minutes passed before tranquility was replaced by turmoil as Japanese aircraft screamed over Pearl Harbor in a disastrous surprise attack. Armor-piercing shells rained down on the Maryland, but her crew lost no time. Men ran to their stations, manning anti-aircraft pieces and firing back at the waves of advancing enemy planes. The warship’s gun crews accounted for seven enemy planes shot down at the close of the attack—a foretaste of the vigor that was to characterize her war career. Among the heroes was Seaman 1st Class Leslie Short, who downed a torpedo bomber and crash-destroyed another, saving lives on both his ship and on the battered Oklahoma.
The price of the attack was staggering. Four crew members were lost from the Maryland, but the tragedy that took the Oklahoma with her alongside was much greater. Torpedoed repeatedly, the Oklahoma was rolled over and sank, entombing hundreds of sailors inside her hull. Most of the Maryland sailors endangered themselves in futile efforts to rescue, infiltrating the damaged ship and removing survivors, while others fought fires and cared for the injured. Pearl Harbor claimed 2,403 American lives and over 1,100 their health. For Maryland, the day was the start of a six-week voyage to the Pacific.
Unlike most of her sisterships, the Maryland came battered but not crippled. She was repaired and towed to Puget Sound, Washington, for overhaul and modernization. By February 1942, she returned to fighting shape—a first among the Pearl Harbor-battered battleships to return to the fleet. Her hasty return was a symbol, a reminder of American toughness and the nation’s industrial power as it prepared to fight a world war.
Maryland was a familiar sight in the island-hopping war before long. She played a flagship role in the Tarawa amphibious invasion in November of 1943, pounding Japanese positions with her huge 16-inch guns. Even her newer equipment, however, had unexpected flaws. Every time she fired her main battery, shockwaves racked the newly installed radio gear, sending crewmen scrambling to fix things repeatedly. While the beach-Marines wrestled with drowned radios that were dead as doornails, communications failure created confusion, more casualties, and the harsh reality that in war, technology is as much a curse as it is a blessing.
Tarawa to Kwajalein, Maryland’s guns kept pouring the vital cover, though her relentless shelling wore her equipment thin. On one occasion, liners to one of her turrets developed cracks from overuse, and she had to be sent back for another round of repair work. At Saipan, she incurred her first sincere battle damage when a Japanese torpedo detonated against her bow, killing two of her crew and opening her starboard side. But repairs at Pearl Harbor only lasted a month and a half, and she was in commission again in short order, again offering fire support as needed. Her toughest fights were still to come.
In the Battle of Leyte Gulf in October 1944, the Maryland played a part in the largest naval battle ever. Having broken open her heavy batteries in bombardment, she turned to defense work as waves of Japanese aircraft came down on her. It was there that she first saw the new terror of the war: kamikaze attacks. One suicide bomber hit the ship close to her forward turrets, killing 31 men and injuring 30 others. The repair took time, but the professionalism of the crew and the Navy’s repair facilities had her back in action within months. Okinawa experienced more of the same hard lessons.
A kamikaze flying a 550-pound bomb slammed into the ship on April 7, 1945, and reduced it to rubble, killing ten of her sailors, wounding 31, and leaving six missing. The Maryland stood the pounding, though her crew loathed to have her removed from service. She stayed on duty during the last months of the Pacific war, her battered decks and bruised hull proof of the pummeling she had been given. Apart from her combat, however, the history of Maryland is also one of men who served on board her.
Sailors such as Gordon Sage, who made it from poverty to being an admiral’s orderly, or Chief Radioman Earl H. Selover, who stood there agog as Pearl Harbor exploded in his face, infused the ship with their personality. Their story—rescuing sailors from overturned Oklahoma, dodging torpedo attacks, dodging kamikazes—betrays the ethos of a war-producing generation that bore the brunt of war at sea.
Others, such as Leslie Short, continued to serve in subsequent wars, and the memories and battle scars of their experience on the “Fighting Mary” remained. With the guns finally silent, taryland had one last task: bringing men home. She completed five trips bringing thousands of veterans back home from the Pacific, a last act on behalf of the men who were away at war for years.
Decommissioned at the war’s conclusion, she was laid up in the Reserve Fleet and finally scrapped in 1959. Her name still exists, however, in monuments and in the memories of sailors who sailed on her. The state of Maryland itself commemorated the battleship in a monument at Annapolis, making sure that the bravery of her crew would never be forgotten. The history of the USS Maryland is more than just the story of one ship. It is a story of survival, perseverance, and the human spirit.
From the fire of Pearl Harbor to the kamikaze sky above Okinawa, the Maryland was both a war weapon and an icon of bravery. In her honor, we remember the generations of sailors who carried her across the Pacific and played a role in the final victory in the greatest war of the 20th century.