80 Years Ago Today, 14 July 1943, while steaming from San Diego to Norfolk: The mighty dreadnought USS Nevada (Battleship No. 36), seen after her extensive repairs due to the pummeling she took at Pearl Harbor 19 months prior, returning from Alaska, where she had provided naval gunfire support from 11 to 18 May 1943 for the liberation of Attu (Operation Landcrab).
Photo # 80-G-74411 now in the collection of the US National Archives
Nevada, in the above, was bound for the Norfolk Navy Yard to undergo another several months of further modernization in preparation for service in the Atlantic Ocean and to support amphibious landings in the European Theater of Operations.
As noted by DANFS
After her time in the yard, she shifted to Boston and for several months, she engaged in convoy duty calling at New York, Maine, Massachusetts, and Ireland. On 18 April 1944, Nevada sailed from Casco Bay, Maine, bound for British waters in order to prepare for Operation Neptune, the landing component of Operation Overlord, the invasion of Normandy.
Trailing astern Nevada is the newly commissioned Bogue-class escort carrier USS Croatan (CVE-25), one of just 11 who served in the U.S. Navy. Just finished at Tacoma in time to sail with the battleship for the East Coast, Croatan would eventually lead her own hunter-killer ASW group that would account for six German U-boats by the end of the war. She would outlast Nevada in the fleet, lingering until 1970 when she concluded her final use as the MSTS-manned aircraft ferry, USNS Croatan (AKV-43) carrying hundreds of Army helicopters to Vietnam.