Pacific ships

Photos and the story

Utah

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TypeAuxiliary (AG)
HullAG-16
BuilderNew York Shipbuilding
Launched1909-12-23
Commissioned1911-08-31
FateSunk. Former battleship BB-31, serving as a target ship. Torpedoes capsized her at Pearl Harbor. She was not raised.

Laid down, displacement, length, beam, draft, speed, and complement are not stored for each hull, so this table leaves them out.

Utah
tormentor4555. USS Utah (AG-16) At the Puget Sound Navy Yard, 18 August 1941. She has been rearmed and partially repainted into Measure 1 camouflage (50297679396).jpg. Public domain, via Wikimedia Commons

USS Utah (AG-16) was a United States Navy target ship, the former battleship BB-31. New York Shipbuilding built her. She was launched on 23 December 1909 and commissioned on 31 August 1911.

The designation AG-16 was her later employment. The hull that had carried the battleship number BB-31 was then serving as a target ship, and that is the Utah the fleet had when the war came to Pearl Harbor.

On 7 December 1941 she was in the Attack on Pearl Harbor. Torpedoes struck the target ship and capsized her. She sank.

No one plane is credited with those torpedoes. The loss is a torpedo sinking: the blows that turned her over capsized the target ship and put her down in the course of the attack.

Utah was not raised. Capsized and sunk at Pearl Harbor, the former battleship remained where the torpedoes had left her, still the target ship AG-16 at the end of her service.

The pictures on this page are the originals.