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The U.S.S. Maryland and sister ships Colorado and West Virginia represented the ultimate in American battleship design just after World War I. With turbo-electric drive and many other improvements, they carried the biggest guns then at sea in the American navy. Peacetime operations for the Maryland were much the same as the rest of the battle fleet – battle training, fleet exercises and visits to foreign ports, interspersed with short periods in the yards for upkeep. Maryland served as the test ship for the aircraft catapult that later became standard on all U.S. battleships.
Maryland operated in both the Pacific and Atlantic fleets, being used for several diplomatic missions to foreign nations, including a goodwill tour by President-elect Herbert Hoover to South America in 1928. In 1940, Maryland was home-ported at Pearl Harbor with the rest of the Pacific Fleet battleships, a response to Japanese aggressiveness elsewhere in the Pacific Rim. On December 7, 1941, Maryland was moored inboard of the Oklahoma and was thus spared being torpedoed, but she was hit by two bombs and had four men killed. Many of Oklahoma’s crew climbed from their capsizing ship to Maryland and assisted in the fight against the Japanese attackers. Very lightly damaged, Maryland was quickly repaired at the Puget Sound navy yard and was back in service early in 1942. Like all the “old” battleships, her fleet operations were in support of amphibious invasions rather than fighting in the battleline, with one notable exception.
At 0500 on November 20, 1943, Maryland’s main battery opened up on the island of Betio in Tarawa Atoll. Maryland was flagship of the Fifth Amphibious Group, charged with capturing the first of many islands en route to Tokyo Bay. This operation was followed by gunfire support at Roi, in Kwajalein Atoll, where the ship engaged in such heavy firing that the liners of the forward guns were split, requiring a trip to Bremerton for repairs and upgrades to her electronics, guns, and anti-aircraft batteries. This was followed by the invasion of Saipan where Maryland was hit by a torpedo from a Japanese aircraft, with two men killed. Maryland was quickly repaired at Pearl Harbor, returning to the war in time for the Philippines operations and the Battle of Leyte Gulf.
On October 25, 1944, Maryland, along with the rest of the battleships of her fire support group – Pennsylvania, Tennessee, California, West Virginia (all Pearl Harbor veterans) along with Mississippi, engaged a Japanese battle force in Surigao Strait, destroying the battleships Yamashiro and Fuso. The Battle of Surigao Strait was the last battleship-on-battleship gunfight in history. Appropriately, five Pearl Harbor veterans were there. Following the war, Maryland, obsolete and unneeded, was placed out of commission in July 1946 and was stricken and then scrapped in 1959. (DBoyer 2007)
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