bb37

Note the 3 guns in B turret. This ship is Arizona or Pennsylvania, not Oklahoma which had 2 guns in B turret.

She was launched on 23 March 1914, sponsored by Lorena J. Cruce, the daughter of Governor of Oklahoma Lee Cruce. USS Oklahoma (BB-37), the only ship of the United States Navy to ever be named for the 46th state, was a World War I-era battleship and the second of two ships in her class; her sister ship was Nevada. She, along with Nevada, were the first two U.S. warships to use oil fuel instead of coal. Commissioned in 1916, Oklahoma served in World War I as a member of BatDiv 6, protecting Allied convoys on their way across the Atlantic. After years of spending time in the Pacific and the Scouting Fleets, Oklahoma was modernized from 1927 to 1929. She rescued American citizens and refugees from the Spanish Civil War in 1936; after returning to the West coast in August of that year, she spent the rest of her life in the Pacific. She was sunk by Japanese bombs and torpedoes on 7 December 1941, in the attack on Pearl Harbor, taking 429 of her crew with her as she capsized. She was uprighted in 1943, but unlike most of the other battleships damaged in the Pearl Harbor attack, she was never repaired and returned to duty. Instead, Oklahoma was stripped of guns and superstructure, and sold for scrap. She sank while under tow to the mainland in 1947. en.wikipedia.org/wiki/USS_Oklahoma_(BB-37)

Another Bain/LOC photo from the launching of the "Oklahoma":

My great grandfather helped build her.

See also: query.nytimes.com/gst/abstract.html?res=F60E13F83C5913738... GIANT U.S. WARSHIP TAKES THE WATER; Gov. Cruce's Daughter, Half-Indian, Names the Fighting Oklahoma New York Times CAMDEN, N.J., March 23. -- "I christen thee Oklahoma," cried Miss Miss Lorena Jane Cruce, daughter of Gov. Cruce of the new western State, and as the bottle of champagne crashed smartly on the prow of the superdreadnought the cheers of patriotic Oklahomans vied with the whistles of tugs at the yards of the New York Shipbuilding Company. NOTE - If you read the full story at the link above, you will read that also present at the ill-fated USS Oklahoma's launching was "Assistant Secretary Roosevelt," that is Assistant Secretary of the Navy Franklin D. Roosevelt. Over 27 years later, USS Oklahoma would be sunk in the Japanese sneak-attack on Pearl Harbor, a day that the later-President Franklin D. Roosevelt would describe as a day which would "live in infamy."

Lorena Jane Cruce (1895-1972), b. Ardmore, Picken County, Indian Territory, daughter of Governor Lee Cruce (1863-1933) and his wife, Chickie LeFlore (1871-1903); married in 1919 Joseph Herndon Norris (1891-1965). They had at least three children (Thomas, Lorena, and Lee). In 2007, her son Thomas Norris, and her granddaughter, Lorena Cruce Maldonado, traveled to Hawaii to dedicate the memorial for the USS Oklahoma, in Pearl Harbor. newsok.com/dedication-to-help-bring-one-family-full-circl...