| Working around the clock during the first two months of 1942,
shipyard craftsman repaired Tennessee's after hull plating and replaced
electrical wiring ruined by heat. To allow her antiaircraft guns a freer
field of fire, her tall cage mainmast was replaced by a tower similar to
that later installed in
Colorado
(BB-45) and
Maryland
(BB-46). An air-search radar was installed; firecontrol radars were fitted
to Tennessee's main-battery and 5-inch antiaircraft gun directors.
Her three-inch and .50-caliber antiaircraft guns were replaced by 1.1-inch
and 20-millimeter automatic shell guns, and her 5-inch antiaircraft gun were
protected by splinter shields. Fourteen-inch Mark-11 models. Other modifications
improved the battleship's habitability. |
| On 25 February 1942, Tennessee departed Puget Sound with
Maryland and
Colorado
(BB-45). Upon arriving at San Francisco, she began a period of intensive
training operations with Rear Admiral William S. Pye's Tasks Force 1, made
up of the Pacific Fleet's available battleships and a screen of
destroyers. |
| However, her role in the war was not to be in the line of battle
for which she had rained for two decades. Most of the great battles of the
conflict were not conventional surface-ship actions, but long-range duels
between fast carrier striking forces. Fleet carriers, with their screening
cruisers and destroyers, could maintain relatively high force speeds; and
a new generation of fast battleships -- beginning with the
North
Carolina (BB-55) -class and continuing into the
South
Dakota (BB-57)- and
Iowa (BB-61)-classes
-- were coming into the fleet and were to prove their worth in action with
the fast carrier force. But the older battleships -- Tennessee and
her kin -- simply could not keep up with the carriers. Thus, while the air
groups dueled for the approaches to Port Moresby and the Japanese naval offensive
reached its zenith in the waters west of Midway, the battleship force found
itself steaming restlessly on the sidelines. |
| On 31 May, Admiral Pye sent two of his battleships to search for
a Japanese carrier erroneously reported approaching the California coast.
Reports of the battle of Midway came in, and Pye sortied from San Francisco
on 5 June with the rest of his battleships and destroyers and the escort
carrier Long Island (AVG-1). The battleship force steamed to an area
some 1,200 miles west of San Francisco and about the same distance southeast
of Hawaii in the expectation that part of the Japanese fleet might attempt
an "end run" raid on our Pacific coast. On 14 June, after it had become clear
that Admiral Yamamoto's fleet -- reeling from its loss of four carriers 10
days before -- had returned to Japanese waters, Pye ordered his force back
to San Francisco. |
| On 1 August, Tennessee again sailed form San Francisco
with Task Force 1. After a week of exercises the battleships joined
Hornet (CV-8) -- on her way to the South Pacific to support th Guadalcanal
operation -- and escorted the carrier as far as Hawaii. Arriving at Pearl
Harbor on the 14th, Tennessee returned to Puget Sound on the 27th
for modernization. |
| California
(BB-44), Tennessee's sister ship, had been sunk in shallow water during
the attack on Pearl Harbor. Refloated, and her hull temporarily patched,
she returned to Puget Sound in June for permanent repairs which included
a thorough modernization. It was decided to include Tennessee in this
program as well. |
|
