USS Nevada — “Refused to Die”

Meet the USS Nevada (BB-36)—the battleship that earned a reputation for surviving what should have been the end. Commissioned in 1916, Nevada was a veteran of two world wars. On December 7, 1941, she was at Pearl Harbor when the Japanese attack began. Struck by bombs and torpedoes and heavily damaged, she managed to get underway—the only battleship to attempt to leave the harbor during the attack. She was eventually grounded to prevent her from sinking in the channel. But that wasn't the end. Nevada was raised, repaired, modernized, and sent back into combat. She later supported the Normandy landings, bombarded targets during Iwo Jima and Okinawa, and continued serving until the end of World War II. Even after the war, Nevada's story wasn't finished. She became a target ship for the 1946 atomic bomb tests at Bikini Atoll, surviving both the airburst and underwater detonation before eventually being decommissioned and sunk as a target in 1948. From Pearl Harbor to Normandy, from Iwo Jima to Okinawa, and finally to the atomic age, Nevada just kept coming back. They burned her. They sank her. They bombed her. They tested an atomic bomb on her. And somehow, the old girl kept refusing to die.