Plausibly Live! - The Official Podcast Of The Dave Bowman Show

On December 7, 1941, the bombs rained down on the US Pacific Fleet at Pearl Harbor. Of the eight Battleships present that day, seven were put out of action. Two of those, Oklahoma, and Arizona, permanently. The other six Battleships were essentially obsolete. In fact, the very reason that the Battleships were in Pearl Harbor that day was because they were useless to accomplish the task the Navy needed done that week. But they were still fully manned and fully operational when Japan attacked. That said… the Navy saw value in the old ships, and decided to raise, repair and refit them to the standards of modern Battleships. In those roles, these six ships would serve through the rest of the Pacific War. One of them, the USS Nevada, found herself pounding the German defenses on D-Day and throughout the Normandy campaign. When General MacArthur landed with his troops in the Philippine Islands on October 20, 1944, the Imperial Japanese Navy had no choice but to respond. Virtually the entire fleet sailed to the P