Why Were Only 8 of America's 59 Battleships Preserved?

The US Navy completed 59 battleships. Only eight still float today, and four of those eight come from the very last class America ever finished. The easy answer is money, but money doesn’t explain which ones made it. One battleship had already been a museum for 17 years when the country took her back and sold her for scrap. Another survived Pearl Harbor and two atomic bombs, and her own Navy sank her anyway. A third survives only as a concrete outline on the South Dakota prairie. The real answer starts in 1898. While USS Oregon was racing around South America, Congress added one line to a Navy spending bill: every first-class battleship would be named for a state. Half a century later, that line decided which ships would live. The Washington Naval Treaty cleared out the oldest generation in the 1920s. The unfinished USS Washington (BB-47) was sunk by the guns of USS Texas. Iowa (BB-4) became the Navy’s first radio-controlled target. Kearsarge became a crane ship. Oregon was lent to her state, never given. Nevada fought from Pearl Harbor to Okinawa, then was used as a target at Bikini Atoll and sunk off Hawaii in 1948. When the Navy cleared out its reserve fleet in the 1960s, only the states named on the bows were willing to pay. Schoolchildren saved North Carolina with dimes, while her sister Washington went to the breakers that same year. More than a million children brought Alabama home, and her crew saved Massachusetts. South Dakota had a state that wanted her, but no harbor to bring her to. The four Iowas survived because they stayed warships: Korea, Vietnam, the 1980s reactivation, Desert Storm, and a 1996 law that kept two of them in reserve until 2006. In this video, we look at how a law, a state, and timing decided which American battleships became museums: Texas, North Carolina, Alabama, Massachusetts, Iowa, New Jersey, Missouri and Wisconsin. We also look at what the others left behind: Oregon’s mast in Portland, a concrete outline in Sioux Falls, and a lifetime pass that never expires. If you’ve walked the deck of one of the eight, or someone in your family served on one of the other 51, tell us which ship in the comments. Subscribe for more deeply researched stories on iconic warships, naval engineering, naval history, and the hidden mechanics of historic ships. 0:00 Only 8 of 59 0:44 A race and a rule (1898) 2:57 The treaty 3:40 Other uses: targets and a crane ship 5:51 The worst morning: Pearl Harbor and Nevada 8:28 The clear-out (1960–1962) 11:30 The answer in four layers 14:42 What the others left behind #Battleship #USNavy #NavalHistory #MuseumShip #IowaClass #USSTexas #USSNorthCarolina #USSAlabama #USSMissouri #WashingtonNavalTreaty #WWII #MilitaryHistory #HistoricShips #ShipHistory