page_title: USS South Dakota (BB-57)
section_title: Post-war
hierarchical_section_title: USS South Dakota (BB-57) / Service history / Post-war
caption_attribution_description: English: USS South Dakota Battleship Memorial in Sioux Falls, South Dakota, USA.
context_page_description: USS South Dakota (BB-57) was the lead vessel of the 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 Congressional 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. Overcrowding was exacerbated by wartime modifications that considerably strengthened their anti-aircraft batteries and significantly increased their crews.
  South Dakota saw extensive action during World War II; immediately upon entering service in mid-1942, she was sent to the south Pacific to reinforce Allied forces waging the Guadalcanal campaign.
context_section_description: On 3 January 1946, South Dakota got underway for the Atlantic; she steamed south and transited the Panama Canal a final time and steamed north to the Philadelphia Navy Yard, arriving there on 20 January. She then underwent an overhaul in preparation for deactivation. A month later on 21 February, RADM Thomas R. Cooley hoisted his flag aboard the ship, making her the flagship of the Fourth Fleet, a reserve unit. Cooley's tenure aboard the ship was brief and he was replaced by Vice Admiral Charles H. McMorris just five days later. On 3 July, McMorris transferred his flag to the heavy cruiser Oregon City and the Navy dissolved the Fourth Fleet on 1 January 1947. South Dakota was decommissioned on 31 January and laid up in the Atlantic Reserve Fleet.
  Plans were drawn up during the period she was in reserve to modernize South Dakota and the other ships of her class should they be needed for future active service. In March 1954, a program to equip the four ships with secondary batteries consisting of ten twin 3-inch (76 mm) guns were proposed, but the plan came to nothing. Another plan to convert the ship into a guided missile battleship arose in 1956–1957, but the cost of the conversion proved to be prohibitive. She would have had all three main battery turrets removed and replaced with a twin RIM-8 Talos missile launcher forward, two RIM-24 Tartar launchers aft, anti-submarine weapons, and equipment to handle helicopters. The cost of the project amounted to $120 million.
  The ship remained in the Navy's inventory for another fifteen years before being stricken from the Naval Vessel Register on 1 June 1962. South Dakota was sold to the Lipsett Division of Luria Brothers and Co. to be broken up for scrap on 25 October. Tugboats towed her from Philadelphia in November to Kearny, New Jersey to be dismantled. Some parts of the ship were retained through the efforts of the Sioux Falls Chamber of Commerce, and they were installed in a memorial to the ship in the city on 7 September 1969. The memorial consists of a low concrete wall built in the outline of the ship in full scale, and artifacts from the ship, including an anchor, a simulated gun turret, and a 16-inch gun are displayed in the outline. A museum was erected in the center of the outline, and it displays other artifacts, including her bell, sailors' uniforms, a scale model of South Dakota, and various other displays.
  Additional artifacts from the ship are preserved at the National Museum of the United States Navy, including one of South Dakota's screws and a section of armor plate. Both items are on display in Willard Park.
caption: The  USS South Dakota memorial in Sioux Falls, South Dakota
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