Qualla: USS Massachusetts (BB-59)

USS Massachusetts (BB-59): Introduction

Sun, 22 Feb 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit USN, Public domain. She fired America's first naval shots of the Atlantic war and among the last against the Japanese Home Islands. Between those bookend salvos, USS Massachusetts (BB-59) steamed more than 225,000 miles, fought from North Africa to the Philippines, and survived typhoons, kamikaze attacks, and one of the most controversial naval decisions of World War II. Today she sits in the Taunton River at Fall River, Massachusetts, her nine 16-inch guns silent but still trained outward, a 35,000-ton monument to the war that defined a century. The children of Massachusetts helped buy her from the Navy. She has been waiting for visitors ever since.

Image: USN | Public domain

USS Massachusetts (BB-59): Baptism at Casablanca

Sun, 22 Feb 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit USN, Public domain. Commissioned on May 12, 1942, at Bethlehem Steel's Fore River Shipyard in Quincy, Massachusetts raced through sea trials and into her first combat assignment: Operation Torch, the Allied invasion of French North Africa. On the morning of November 8, 1942, she opened fire at 07:04...

Image: USN | Public domain

USS Massachusetts (BB-59): Shield of the Fast Carriers

Sun, 22 Feb 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit mliu92 from San Mateo, CC BY-SA 2.0. Massachusetts reached the Pacific in March 1943 and spent most of the war doing a job that sounds routine but was anything but: escorting the fast carrier task force. Her role was to screen aircraft carriers from surface ships and throw up walls of anti-aircraft fire against Japa...

Image: mliu92 from San Mateo | CC BY-SA 2.0

USS Massachusetts (BB-59): The Battle That Almost Was

Sun, 22 Feb 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit US Navy, Public domain. During the Battle of Leyte Gulf in October 1944, Massachusetts came within hours of a decisive surface engagement that never materialized. When Admiral Kurita's Center Force was detected in the San Bernardino Strait, Admiral Marc Mitscher's chief of staff, Arleigh Burke, proposed...

Image: US Navy | Public domain

USS Massachusetts (BB-59): The Last Salvos

Sun, 22 Feb 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit USN, Public domain. In July 1945, Massachusetts was detached from carrier escort duty for a mission with no precedent: bombarding the Japanese Home Islands. On July 14, she led a force of battleships against the Kamaishi industrial complex on Honshu, Japan's second-largest iron and steel manufacturi...

Image: USN | Public domain

USS Massachusetts (BB-59): A Battleship Saved by Schoolchildren

Sun, 22 Feb 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit U.S. Department of Defense, Public domain. Decommissioned in 1947 and stricken from the Naval Vessel Register in 1962, Massachusetts faced the scrapyard. But former crewmen formed the Massachusetts Memorial Committee and launched a fundraising campaign that included donations from schoolchildren across the state. On June ...

Image: U.S. Department of Defense | Public domain