NORFOLK, Va. — The last battleship America built, and its largest, the USS Wisconsin made its final voyage last week.
The 57-year-old ship, which saw action in three wars ending with Desert Storm, docked alongside a nautical museum in the place that bills itself as the naval capital of the world.
The ship opens to the public in April.
Its final salute, held on the 59th anniversary of the bombing of Pearl Harbor, featured morning fireworks, a flyover with F-14 fighters and a 21-gun salute.
A handful of state of Wisconsin veterans and elected officials turned out.
Before dawn, 316 veterans — one of them age 90 — boarded in the dark and cold for the last trip. The journey had the 887-foot ship under tug from nearby Portsmouth in the deep waters of the Elizabeth River, which flows into Chesapeake Bay.
David Patrykus, 64, of Wisconsin Rapids, Wis., an officer with the ship's 1,100-member association — similar to a national alumni club — was among them.
Why such camaraderie among Wisconsin's sailors?
"It's hard to explain," Patrykus began, "but when you're with a group of people you've trained with, worked with, played with, gone ashore with, experienced ups and downs with, you just develop a bond."
When a ship is under power, he said, you feel the rumble beneath your feet. You hear it. You smell it. And when you're back on shore, you miss it.
Returning Thursday to its weathered teak deck, Patrykus said: "It's like home. It's like going to your hometown again."
Patrykus quit school at 17 and joined the Navy to get away from Wisconsin. He ended up on its namesake ship as the Korean War ended. He remembers hearing the ship's band play "On, Wisconsin" time and again as they patrolled nearby waters during an uneasy truce.
Thursday, the ship was pulled from the Norfolk Naval Shipyard to a new, multimillion-dollar berth at Nauticus, The National Maritime Center. The spot features concrete columns meant to steady the ship during hurricane season.
The vessel — "an awesome piece of naval architecture," one official gushed — was tugged because its propulsion system is being dismantled.
Still Navy property, the ship is on inactive status, meaning it could be recommissioned, though officials say that is unlikely because its boilers and armaments require a great deal of manpower. And the muscle in today's more-automated fleet comes from aircraft carriers, cruisers, destroyers and submarines.
History books say the Wisconsin got its name after President Franklin Roosevelt declared in the late '30s that future battleships be named for states that for the longest time before had not been represented by a ship.
Built between 1941 and 1943 in Philadelphia, the ship was launched 57 years to the day before Thursday's so-long.
That in subsequent years it wound up in and out of mothballs and now is a museum piece had some grumbling.
"The Navy was stupid to get rid of these ships — there's nothing in the world that compares to a battleship," said Michael Cochlin, 39, a Navy radio man from Virginia Beach.
Norfolk, with 261,200 people, is home to the Norfolk Naval Base and Naval Air Station and is headquarters for the Navy's Atlantic Fleet carrier and battle group.
City fathers hope that having the USS Wisconsin will help with downtown revitalization and tourism.