The Battleship South Dakota: Most Decorated Ship of the War
Near Sioux Falls, South Dakota
The outline you are looking at in Sherman Park traces the full-scale footprint of the most decorated American warship of the Second World War. The USS South Dakota, hull number Battleship Fifty-Seven, earned thirteen battle stars in three years of combat and sailed more than two hundred forty-six thousand miles across the Atlantic and Pacific before being decommissioned in nineteen forty-seven.
Commissioned in March of nineteen forty-two at the Philadelphia Navy Yard, the South Dakota was the lead ship of a new class of fast battleships designed to operate alongside carrier strike groups. She reached the Pacific that summer and immediately entered combat in the waters around Guadalcanal, one of the most brutal naval campaigns of the war. At the Battle of Santa Cruz in October nineteen forty-two, a Japanese bomb disabled her forward gun turret. She was repaired and returned to the fight within weeks.
Then came the Naval Battle of Guadalcanal in November, and one of the most violent nights any American warship survived. South Dakota was struck by roughly twenty-seven shells in a single engagement. Nearly everything on her superstructure was destroyed. Communications failed. She withdrew damaged but afloat, and then did the thing that made her legend. She went back.
The ship went on to bombard Japanese shore positions in the Pacific island campaigns and take part in the Battle of the Philippine Sea. She was present for the Japanese surrender ceremony in Tokyo Bay on September second, nineteen forty-five.
When she was sold for scrap in nineteen sixty-two, a citizens' effort in Sioux Falls saved what could be saved: the anchor, a simulated gun turret, her bell, her flag. They built this memorial park in nineteen sixty-nine, laying out the ship's exact dimensions in concrete so you can walk the length of what she was.
