page_title: USS Indiana (BB-58)
section_title: Service history
hierarchical_section_title: USS Indiana (BB-58) / Service history
caption_attribution_description: The U.S. Navy battleship USS Indiana (BB-58) on 8 September 1942 at Hampton Roads, Virginia (USA). The ship still had not yet sailed on her shakedown cruise.
context_page_description: USS Indiana (BB-58) was the second of four South Dakota-class fast 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 guns, but refusal to authorize larger battleships kept their displacement close to the Washington limit of 35,000 long tons. 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 1942 when she supported marines fighting during the Guadalcanal campaign.
caption: USS Indiana while on trials, 8 September 1942
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