"Yokosuka D4Y Suisei (Comet) Allied reporting name 'Judy', at the Planes of Fame Air Museum in Chino, CA. While originally a D4Y1, which has an inline engine, it was rebuilt as a radial engined D4Y3, albeit with an American engine due to the lack of available Japanese engines."
Good point. I think the simple explanation is the best; the Japanese saw that one battleship was still operational and would have targeted her wherever she was. I think the Americans were more concerned about the channel issue; a sunken battleship would be a serious inconvenience even if the blockage was not total like the recent Suez Canal incident. Also at some point we would set up salvage operations to raise Nevada, with salvage craft, barges, etc. I never made it over to PacFleet; does anyone know how deep the channel is/was? It must be fairly wide; Nevada ran close to the shoreline before touching bottom.
The blockage would not have been at all serious. In the picture where USS Shaw blows up (see below) we see the butt end of Nevada as she is heading into the channel. The contraption in the foreground is a harbor dredge*, one of several that were there to keep the silt from the Pearl River from piling up in the harbor and channel. The channel would have been widened in the worst case scenario (a crosswise sinking) were to happen. Nevada's CO stated later that he had grounded her on Hospital Point just to prevent this. *Not to be confused with Judge Dredge.
"[2084x1365] HMS MAGPIE, U82. A modified Black Swan class Sloop, she was the only ship to be commanded by Prince Philip, the duke of Edinburgh. He commanded it from 1950 to 1952."
"The last surviving example of the Cruiser Tank Mk.III, June 2015. The tank museum in Bovington, England, June 2015."
"M10 tank destroyers of A Company, 634th Tank Destroyer Battalion, 1st Infantry Division, firing their 3 inch guns at defenses in Aachen, Germany, October 14th, 1944."
"County class heavy cruiser HMS Shropshire at Scapa Flow, 28 August 1941. She shows only limited modernisation. [1548 x 880]"
"American aircraft carrier USS Franklin (CV-13) nicknamed "Big Ben" listing, with crew on deck, 19 March 1945, photo taken from the USS Santa Fe (CL-60) light cruiser. (Colorized)"
"[3277x2851] Martin P6M SeaMaster flying over the Maryland coastline some time in the late 1950s. Unique, cool, and ambitious!"
At a time when flying boats were being phased out...WW2 had created many run ways largely negating the need for a flying boat...a small redesign of the hull and it would have made a sweet executive jet...
A red tailed black cockatoo...very loud birds! You can clearly see the scales still lining it’s eyes...lizard eyes
"PT boat off Hollandia in New Guinea 1945 "The sound of those 1500 HP V12 aero engines at wide open throttle, with the mufflers bypassed, must have been awesome!" [5120x3778]"