page_title: USS Tennessee (BB-43)
section_title: The Aleutian Islands
hierarchical_section_title: USS Tennessee (BB-43) / Service history / World War II / The Aleutian Islands
context_page_description: USS Tennessee (BB-43) was the lead ship of the Tennessee class of dreadnought battleships built for the United States Navy in the 1910s. The Tennessee class was part of the standard series of twelve battleships built in the 1910s and 1920s, and were developments of the preceding New Mexico class. They were armed with a battery of twelve 14-inch guns in four three-gun turrets. Tennessee served in the Pacific Fleet for duration of her peacetime career. She spent the 1920s and 1930s participating in routine fleet training exercises, including the annual Fleet Problems, and cruises around the Americas and further abroad, such as a goodwill visit to Australia and New Zealand in 1925.
  Tennessee was moored in Battleship Row when the Japanese attacked Pearl Harbor on 7 December 1941, which brought the United States into World War II. She was not seriously damaged, and after being repaired she operated off the West Coast of the US in 1942.
context_section_description: On 31 May, Tennessee and the heavy cruiser Portland steamed out of San Pedro, bound for Adak, Alaska, where they arrived on 9 June. On arrival, Rear Admiral Howard Kingman, the commander of Battleship Division Two, came aboard the ship. The ship joined Task Force 16, which had been organized to support the Aleutian Islands Campaign to recapture the islands of Attu and Kiska from the Japanese. By the time Tennessee arrived, the task force had already retaken Attu, so Tennessee was initially occupied with patrolling for Japanese forces that might launch a counter-attack. American radar operators, including those aboard Tennessee, who were not familiar with operating the new equipment repeatedly made false reports of enemy contacts in the fog that blanketed the area. The supposed enemy contacts were in fact distant land masses that appeared to be ships that were much closer on the radar sets. These false reports culminated in the Battle of the Pips in late July, though Tennessee was not involved in that incident.
  On 1 August, Tennessee received orders to approach Kiska and join the pre-invasion bombardment. At 13:10, she steamed into range, along with the battleship Idaho and three destroyers. Tennessee slowed, deployed paravanes from her bow to cut the mooring cables for any naval mines that might be in the area, and launched her Vought OS2U Kingfisher scout planes to spot the fall of her shells. By 16:10, she had closed to a distance of about 7,000 yd (6,400 m) from the beach and she opened fire with her 5-inch guns. Poor visibility hampered the ability of the Kingfishers to observe the ship's fire, but she nevertheless began firing with her 14-inch guns at 16:24. She fired sixty 14-inch shells at the area of what had been a Japanese submarine base before checking her fire at 16:45, by which time visibility had further diminished. After recovering her Kingfishers, she and the rest of the ships steamed back to Adak.
  Two weeks later, Tennessee was again sent to shell Kiska early on the morning of 15 August, now to support the landing of ground forces. She opened fire at 05:00, targeting Japanese coastal artillery batteries on Little Kiska Island. She then shifted fire with her main battery to target anti-aircraft batteries on Kiska proper while her 5-inch guns set an artillery observation position on Little Kiska on fire. Following the bombardment, the soldiers were landed, only to discover that the Japanese had already withdrawn from the island in July. Tennessee thereafter left the Aleutians and returned to San Francisco on 31 August, where she conducted extensive training exercises. After replenishing her ammunition and stores, she departed for Hawaii for further battle training. From there, she steamed to the New Hebrides, where the invasion fleet was preparing for operations in the Gilbert Islands.
caption: The American fleet assembled for the attack on Kiska
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