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YorktownCV-5As the 2nd character to be designed in this series, she finally got her official portrait after 8 years of waiting.
As the second ship of the North Carolina class, she was well-known to the world since her launching. She was obviously very confident about her power as a new fast battleship. However, she too suffered from vibration problems like her older sister. She had to wear soft sneakers throughout her career, and she never got it healed.
She sailed extensively with the Royal Navy and even had King George VI onboard. They guarded the lanes to the Soviet Union until she left for the Pacific in mid 1942. She "accidentally" missed her commander in March 1942, and Willis Lee relieved him from his position. He proved to be her best partner of all time.
On the night of the battle of Guadalcanal, she and South Dakota repelled the attack on the Henderson from Kirishima's fleet. Thanks to South Dakota's service as a bait (I'm sorry), Washington managed to stay undetected and knock the old battleship Kirishima down, though the two US battleships had some argue over their contributions.
(* Newspapers of late 1943 showed "Battleship X knocking enemy battleship down at 15 miles away". No matter it was for confidential reasons or not, Washington was certainly pissed off.)
She sailed with the fast carrier task force throughout almost all of the battles left, from Marshall islands, Mariana islands to Okinawa, except for the time she had to repair her damage caused by the collision with Indiana. She was with Enterprise when the latter suffered a heavy Kamikaze damage, and she was criticized again by the angry South Dakota for not protecting Enterprise good enough. She went back to Bremerton for an overhaul that lasted till September and missed the most important part of the war--the victory.
Although the navy did consider renewing her power system to eventually get rid of her vibration, she was proved too small for the system as a treaty battleship. Her career was sentenced to an end and she was sold for scrap 2 years after Enterprise, leaving her sister North Carolina sitting by the seaside of the state where she was named after, watching the sunset till today.
2022-10-21 16:54:22 +0000