USS South Dakota (BB-57) was the name ship of her own class. She was not Washington. The North Carolina hulls had been made long to buy speed, and the armor had paid for it. South Dakota was cut shorter so the same treaty weight could go into protection. She still carried nine 16-inch guns. The ship was cramped, and she was hard to live in. New York Shipbuilding, at Camden, laid her down on 5 July 1939, launched her on 7 June 1941, and commissioned her on 20 March 1942. Captain Thomas L. Gatch had her. In July 1942 she was on her shakedown in the Atlantic, new, and still whole.
On 26 October she was with the carriers off the Santa Cruz Islands, holding station on Enterprise while that ship twisted under air attack. A bomb hit the roof of Turret I, the forward 16-inch turret. A splinter cut Gatch's throat. The men on the bridge kept him alive. One man later died of his wounds, and dozens more were hurt. She was not sunk. Two of the guns in the next turret were gouged so badly they could not be fired. She would fight the November night with seven main-battery guns, not nine.
On the night of 14-15 November she was astern of Washington, off Savo Island. Before a Japanese shell hit her, the shock of her own salvo started an electrical failure. The radar went, and much of the power with it. She was nearly blind. Searchlights found her, and the burning destroyers ahead of her lit her hull. Kirishima hit her with 14-inch shells. Atago, Takao, Nagara, and Sendai hit her as well. She took more than two dozen shells. Thirty-nine men were killed and fifty-nine wounded. The superstructure was a wreck. The hull held. She was not sunk.
She did not sink Kirishima. Washington did, with 16-inch gunfire, and Kirishima capsized at 03:25. The Japanese cruisers and destroyers sank Walke and Preston and wrecked Benham. Those losses are not South Dakota's.
She was repaired and fought the rest of the war. She was still afloat when it ended. The Navy decommissioned her on 31 January 1947.
