HISTORY

With President Herbert Hoover, Secretary of

the Navy Charles F. Adams, Admiral Charles F. Hughes, Chief of Naval Operations, and

others, observing Hampton Roads maneuvers,

20 May 1930 (photo: U.S. Naval History and Heritage Command).

Instead of undergoing post-modernization sea trials, the USS Arizona left on

March 19, 1931 with President Herbert Hoover on board, who spent a short vacation

on her decks sailing the Caribbean. The

official sea trials were undertaken after

returning, as were some smaller repairs.

Over his ten day stay on board the Arizona, President Hoover visited Puerto Rico

and the Virgin Islands before returning

to Hampton Roads in Virginia, where he

disembarked. The USS Arizona reached

the shipyard at Norfolk, from where she

left again on August 1, 1931, to spend the

rest of her life in the Pacific. The following

years were spent trading peacetime missions with training exercises or at the

Puget Sound Naval Shipyard in Bremerton on the west coast of the United States.

Besides her participation in the annual

“Fleet Problem” naval maneuvers, it should be mentioned that she played a starring role in the movie “Here Comes the

Navy” in May 1934. The first screening of

the film took place on the Arizona on June

30, 1934. More sobering duties were performed by the Arizona, when she came to

the aid of earthquake victims in Long Beach, California in March, 1933, and on the

night of July 26th, 1934 she collided with

the fishing trawler ‘Umatilla’ near Cape

Flattery in Seattle. The result was two

dead among the crew of the fishing vessel, and the Arizona failed to stop and offer assistance. Captain McGillivray Milne

faced a military court martial and would

never see another command in his life.

Another unhappy event occurred when a

crewmember was burned who was part

of the crew responsible for Turret No.2

during live fire exercises as a result of

exhaust fumes after firing. This was on

July 24, 1936. The fire fighting system that

was initiated caused an electrical short,

and a small fire. Additionally, budget cuts

through the latter half of the thirties had

a bearing on the frequency and lengths of

stay in home ports. For example, the USS

Arizona spent fiscal year 1936-37 at anchor for 267 days, and 255 the year after…

Long Beach Earthquake, March 10th, 1933

When the USS Arizona anchored in San

Pedro in early 1933, a 6.4 magnitude

earthquake struck the Long Beach area

of Southern California. The date was

March 10, 1933, shortly before 6 p.m. The

earthquake killed 120 people and injured

another 500. It is said that up to two-thirds

of the victims were among those who initially ran out of buildings and were hit by

falling debris. Material damage reached

$50 million (roughly $1 billion at today‘s

prices). School buildings were severely

affected, 70 were destroyed and another

120 were damaged. The quake led the

California legislature to adopt the Field

Act, which gave the State Department of

(Vladimír Šulc)

Architecture authority and responsibility for approving projects and overseeing

the construction of public schools. Since

the adoption of Field‘s Law, no school in

California has collapsed as a result of

a seismic event. Immediately after the

earthquake, Arizona sailors engaged in

rescue operations, using the ship to provide refuge for the injured, the ship‘s galley

providing meals for those affected, and

provided physical protection from looting

and violence, which often occurs during

similar natural disasters.

Source:

www.earthquakeauthority.com

Final Modifications

After the modernization of the ship was

completed, there were other smaller

modifications made to the Arizona besides the usual maintenance and repair

work. The most significant of these was

the replacement of the boom by a crane for hoisting seaplanes (1934), modifying the top of the smokestack to divert

exhaust away from the front mast and

bridge (1936), and moving the 90cm (36inch) searchlights from platforms around

the smokestack to the main mast where

the 12.7mm (.5 inch) guns originally were

(1939). Positioning these weapons was

a part of almost every stay in a shipyard.

March 2022

INFO Eduard

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