Few landmarks define the Mobile Bay skyline quite like the Battleship USS Alabama, the World War II veteran that has sat permanently anchored at Battleship Memorial Park since arriving in the fall of 1964. For many longtime residents and visitors alike, a trip across the causeway isn’t complete without a stop to walk her decks.
The USS Alabama arrived in Mobile Bay on Sept. 14, 1964, capping a campaign that saved the ship from the scrapyard after its decommissioning following World War II service in the Pacific. Alabama schoolchildren famously contributed dimes and pennies to a statewide fundraising drive to bring the battleship home, a grassroots effort that became a point of pride across the state and helped fund the vessel’s move to Mobile.
Battleship Memorial Park officially opened to the public on Jan. 9, 1965, and has since welcomed more than 14 million visitors, according to park officials. The park has grown well beyond the ship itself over the decades, adding aircraft exhibits and a submarine, the USS Drum, to its collection, but the battleship remains the centerpiece and the reason most visitors make the trip.
Bill Tunnell, the park’s executive director, has often noted how much local history is wrapped up in the ship’s decks, passageways and gun turrets, from its Pacific combat record to the decades it has spent as a floating museum and memorial to Alabama veterans. For many families in Mobile and Baldwin counties, the ship has become a multigenerational tradition, with grandparents who remember its arrival in 1964 now bringing grandchildren to explore the same passageways.
The battleship also plays host to a range of community events throughout the year, from military reunions to educational field trips for school groups across the region, cementing its role as more than just a museum piece. It stands as a physical reminder of Alabama’s contribution to the war effort and of the statewide fundraising campaign, driven in large part by schoolchildren, that ensured the ship had a permanent home rather than being sold for scrap.
Six decades after that campaign, the USS Alabama remains a fixture of the coastal Alabama landscape, visible from Interstate 10 and the Battleship Parkway to anyone crossing into or out of Mobile.