A pioneering Nevada-class battleship, renowned as the only battleship to get underway during the 1941 Pearl Harbor attack. Despite sustaining severe damage, she was salvaged, modernized, and served in major WWII battles, including D-Day, before being sunk as a target in 1948. The wreck lies 65 nautical miles southwest of Pearl Harbor, Hawaii.
The Navy tended to use decommissioned ships and subs as target practice.
They were going to use a U-505 German sub from WW II as target practice. This U-Boat was the only one–or one of the only ones–to be captured before the captain scuttled it and let it sink. That gave us their enigma machine that the sub crew used to decode messages from Berlin. That was a great help during the war and the crew we caught were the only POWs that could not communicate to Germany to let them know they were alive–because if they did, Germany would know we had the machine.
This U-Boat is at Chicago’s Museum of Science and Industry and they offer a fascinating tour of it.