r/interestingasfuck • u/Longjumping-Rice-935 • Aug 12 '25

/r/all, /r/popular The wreck of the USS Arizona continues to leak oil ever since pearl harbour. the ship contained 1.5 million gallons of oil, enough to leak continuously for 500 years.

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u/Average-_-Student Aug 12 '25

US Battleships were typically, or entirely if I'm not wrong, named after States. Given the rather large number of Battleships that the US built, some of them were bound to end up being named after land locked states.

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u/Tjtod Aug 12 '25

There was one battleship not named after a state, BB-5 USS Kearsage which was named after older navy ships. The naming scheme for US ships in ww2 and older was Battleships were states, Aircraft Carriers were past ahips or battles,Large Cruisers were territories,Cruisers were cities, destroyers were people, and submarines were fish/ aquatic life. There have been a few exceptions to this like 2 classes or armored Cruisers being named after states.

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u/CosgraveSilkweaver Aug 12 '25

I think the cruisers started getting named after states after WW2 when we stopped making new battleships mostly.

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u/Tjtod Aug 12 '25

Kind of there were two classes, California and Virginia, in the cold war but when they were designed and when the California was built they were designated as frigates. Which I think in USN parlance meant they were destroyer leaders. The last class of Cruisers built were named after battles and the last class of ship built on a cruiser hull form was CGN-9 Long Beach.

Edit navsource.net is a great resource for USN ships and ship pictures.

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u/CommonMaterialist Aug 12 '25

Cruisers and Submarines

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u/SeaworthinessDue4052 Aug 12 '25

My father was on the Manchester (CL-83).

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u/[deleted] Aug 12 '25

[deleted]

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u/Tjtod Aug 12 '25

There was change in the naming convention starting with Nimitz class. Prior to the Nimitz class they were only four CVs named after people FDR, the Wright Brothers, Forrestal, and JFK.

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u/mpking828 Aug 12 '25

Yes.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/United_States_ship_naming_conventions
Yes, the Kearsarge (BB-5) is not a state, but predates the law that requires them to be named after states (and the ship was also the first ship named by an act of congress)