Operation BB-60: How School Children Brought a Battleship to Alabama

By: T. Jensen Lacey‍

It was a hot, tense day at the Panama Canal. Reporters and other interested and curious people watched as the huge (45,000-ton) battleship, the USS Alabama, squeezed its way through the locks. The suspense grew as onlookers saw the tiny clearance the massive ship had: only 11 inches on each side.

The USS Alabama had been built in 1940 as part of a fleet of battleships known as the South Dakota class. The ship and its crew of 2,500 served their time admirably in the war effort in both the North Atlantic and South Pacific and led the victorious way into Tokyo Bay in September of 1945 for the Japanese surrender. The ship they called the “Mighty A” earned 9 battle stars for her service as the “Heroine of the Pacific.”

Flash forward to May 1962: the U.S. government announced that the Navy was sending the fleet of South Dakota class battleships, including the USS Alabama, to the scrapyard. Seeing this announcement in the newspaper, Mobile Chamber of Commerce member Jimmie Morris became alarmed. 

That very day, he organized a committee of concerned Alabamians to try and not only save the USS Alabama but to bring it home to the Port of Mobile. In September of 1963, the Alabama Senate gave their approval for the project, and Governor George C. Wallace proclaimed, “Let’s bring our ship home!”

The problem was, there was no budget for the project. There was a solution to this problem: get the state’s schoolchildren on board. With the fundraising slogan of “Let’s Bring Our Ship Home!” students organized across the state, donating nickels, dimes, pennies, and, occasionally, quarters. Some businesses added to the fund, and restaurants in Birmingham donated what they took in from their patrons one day. 

The first school system to meet its fundraising goal was the city of Opp. By 1964, the schoolchildren and other fundraisers had donated enough money to pay for the ship’s journey to the Port of Mobile. It was an arduous journey for a 45,000-ton ship which was towed 5,600 miles from Bremerton, Washington, to Mobile, Alabama. It still holds the record for the longest non-military dead-weight tow in the history of the U.S. Navy 

The trip took two months, starting in July 1964. In a fitting tribute to the original crew of the battleship, Navy sailors who had called the ship home during World War II were part of the homecoming hands. The USS Alabama came into the Port of Mobile on September 14, 1964, and after some refurbishing, it opened to the public in January 1965.

The USS Alabama has been declared a National Historic Landmark and is located at the USS Alabama Battleship Memorial Park in Mobile. She has been restored to reflect how she looked during her glory days of World War II. There are several World War II historical re-enactments held at the park each year, and to date, nearly 20 million visitors have stepped aboard. In addition, school groups and others, such as the Boy Scouts, often have campouts on the ship.

There was an addition to the park in 1969, when the USS Drum, a 311-foot WWII submarine, was also donated. It opened for tours on July 4, 1969.  Now, according to their website, the USS Alabama is “easily the most recognizable symbol of the State of Alabama.”

As far as the schoolchildren go, they received something in return for their donations: they were each awarded a US Alabama Charter Member Card, which allows them to tour their battleship at no charge—with no expiration date. Furthermore, some of those schoolchildren have become famous. A former student at Murphy High School, Don Siegelman, became governor of Alabama. 

Terry Ankerson, then the student body campaign chair at the former McGill Institute (today called McGill-Toolen High School), now serves on the Battleship Commission. 

Another McGill Institute student who donated funds would later become known to the world as musician and author Jimmy Buffett (singer of such hits as “Margaritaville” and “Cheeseburger in Paradise”). Buffett donated his two airplanes, a Stearman bi-plane and a Grumman, to the Battleship Memorial Park in 2022, before his passing in 2023. 

With websites today such as GoFundMe.com, this feat of raising money to move a huge vessel thousands of miles would not be remarkable; but before the internet, social media, and other instant ways to get the word out, what the schoolchildren of Alabama did in the 1960s was something of a miracle.