On December 7, 1941 USS Maryland was moored inboard of USS Oklahoma. The ship’s guns responded to the attack almost immediately. From their vantage point, the men witnessed the attacks that critically damaged Maryland’s sisters along battleship row, and faced attacks so fierce that the Japanese reported her sunk. They were wrong, and the “fighting Mary” would come back to haunt the empire of the rising sun, and feel the fury of the dreaded Kamikazes.
During the civil war, the manufacture of powder and explosives was often handled by the most vulnerable, young women and children, whose labor was needed when so many men had been sent off to war. On March 13, 1863, the confederacy experienced a munitions disaster, in the confederate capitol of Richmond.