USS Pennsylvania (BB-38) was the lead ship of her class and one of the most durable battleships of World War II. She was in dry dock at Pearl Harbor on December 7, 1941, which spared her from the fate of the battleships moored at Ford Island — though she took bomb hits that day. She went on to serve in every major theater of the Pacific War: the Aleutians, the Gilbert and Marshall Islands, Leyte Gulf, Lingayen Gulf, and Okinawa. “Regunning” refers to the replacement of worn main battery gun barrels — a demanding shipyard evolution requiring precision rigging to extract and re-install each barrel. The August 1945 Ships and Stations section of All Hands documented this overhaul, giving Navy readers a behind-the-scenes look at the industrial work that kept the fleet’s battleships fighting to the end of the war.
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