On July 31, 1948, the battleship USS Nevada BB-36 was sunk by a torpedo from a Navy bomber, ending the career of possibly the most battered ship in history. Not only did the Nevada survive the Pearl Harbor attack in which she was hit by a torpedo and as many as 10 bombs (minimum 6), but she was also hit by a Japanese Kamikaze suicide plane off Okinawa as well as by shore battery fire, but easily survived those hits.
Digging Deeper
After World War II, the battleship built in 1914 was deemed obsolete and was used for the “Able” and “Baker” atomic bomb tests in the Pacific, as a target. Your clue as to how tough this ship was is that she was used in 2 atomic bomb tests, having survived the first (surface) blast and then the second (subsurface) blast. The mighty battleship was then used for target practice by other US Navy warships, including the battleship USS Iowa. Expected to be sunk by the heavy bombardment, the Nevada kept on floating and was finally finished off with the last torpedo.
