She's pretty. :-)
Can really see the American influence in her design, so distinctive from other navies. I'm not a fan of the US cars, but I'm a big fan of the ship styling.
Agreed. Silly cage masts aside (the logic is sound, the practice not so much), American ships had an elegance to them. Particularly the Big Five, with their clipper bows, but even older ships. Minimalist superstructure, simple layout, all-or-nothing armor layout (which, along with STS steel, was one of the biggest advantages American ships had)... fantastic designs.
This would be very, very close to the Pearl Harbor attack- the ship still has the pre-war superstructure in place (rather than the South Dakota-esque refit she got afterwards), but atop the bridge is an early search radar (CXAM, I believe? I'm typing from a subway car, shut up) which she wouldn't have had for more than a year-ish before the attack. (In case you're wondering why that didn't allow her to detect the inbound attack, it wasn't active while the ship was moored up on a sleepy Sunday- and the surrounding hills would have blocked it anyway.)
Why was she called the Prune Barge?
One of California's major crops at that point were prunes- thus, the state ship ended up with 'Prune Barge' as a name. All things considered, sailors being what they are, the ship likely had more than a few other names, likely more colorful than that one. ^-^
