USS Indiana (BB-58)

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USS Indiana, hull number BB-58, was the second of four South Dakota-class battleships built for the United States Navy in the 1930s. The first American battleships designed after the Washington treaty system began to break down in the mid-1930s, they took advantage of an escalator clause that allowed increasing the main battery to 16-inch (406 mm) guns, but refusal to authorize larger battleships kept their displacement close to the Washington limit of 35,000 long tons (35,562 t). A requirement to be armored against the same caliber of guns as they carried, combined with the displacement restriction, resulted in cramped ships, a problem that was exacerbated as wartime modifications that considerably strengthened their anti-aircraft batteries significantly increased their crews. Indiana entered service in April 1942, by which time the United States was engaged in World War II, and the ship was immediately pressed into action in the Pacific War against Japan. Her first combat came in late...

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