Here at LSOZI, we are going to take out every Wednesday for a look at the old steam/diesel navies of the 1859-1946 time period and will profile a different ship each week.
– Christopher Eger
Warship Wednesday March 12, 100 years of Texas
BB-35 Texas, 24 March 1914, 100 years ago this month, just two weeks after commissioning (click bigger)
Here we see the classic US naval dreadnought, USS Texas (BB-35), today is her 100th birthday and she is the oldest US battleship afloat.
Awarded 17 December 1910 to the Newport News Shipbuilding Company, she was commissioned on 12 March 1914 for a cost of $5.83 million. Decommissioned 21 April 1948, she served through both World Wars and over the course of her 34-years of service she received five battle stars.
A New York class battleship, Texas was some 27,000 tons. Her 14 Babcock and Wilcox coal-fired boilers with oil spray could push that leviathan at over 21-knots and her 10×14-inch (356mm) guns gave her an impressive arsenal.
After service in Mexico in 1914, World War One saw her conduct naval gunnery training before she sailed to join the British Fleet. She departed New York on 30 January 1918, arrived at Scapa Flow in the Orkney Islands off the coast of Scotland on 11 February, and rejoined BatDiv 9, by then known as the 6th Battle Squadron of Britain’s Grand Fleet. Texas’s service with the Grand Fleet consisted entirely of convoy missions and occasional forays to reinforce the British squadron on blockade duty in the North Sea whenever German heavy units threatened. She was present at the surrender of the German High Seas Fleet, returning home at Christmas 1918.
Idaho (BB-42) (foreground) and Texas (BB-35), circa 1930.
After an extensive overhaul in the 1920s, Texas was shuttled back and forth from Atlantic to Pacific, serving as a flagship more often than not.
On December 7, 1941, she luckily was on Neutrality Patrol on the East Coast and escaped the nightmare that was Battleship Row. She spent 1942 in convoy duty, dodging German U-boats, and stood off of Casablanca for the Torch Landings, with a young war correspondent named Walter Cronkite on board while she provided naval gunfire support ashore.
On D-Day, Texas was the star of the Naval show off Omaha Beach. Her firing area of Omaha was the western half, supporting the US 29th Infantry Division and the US 2nd Ranger Battalion at Pointe du Hoc, and the US 5th Ranger Battalion, which had been diverted to Western Omaha to support the troops at Pointe du Hoc. Closing to within 3000-yards of the beach, she fired all along Dog One, the route made famous in the first ten minutes of Saving Private Ryan. She continued her bombardment as the troops moved inland over the next two weeks, even having her starboard torpedo blister flooded with water to provide a list of two degrees to increase her guns elevation.
USS Texas BB-35 by Ruutiukko
She later silenced the Germans at Cherbourg, supported the Dragoon landings in the South of France from the Mediterranean.
Dodging German coastal artillery off Cherbourg
With the war in Europe winding down, she sailed for the Pacific in 1945, moving in close to bombard Okinawa. When the war ended she was in the Ryukyus, preparing to bombard coastal Japan itself in the upcoming big invasions of the main islands.
Her wars finished, the old battle-wagon was obsolete. While the Navy kept the newer 1940s era SoDak and Iowa class ships as well as the Alaska type battle-cruisers, the old WWI era dreadnoughts like Texas were soon to be discarded. Most tragically went to the scrappers. Some, like the Mississippi lived on a few more years as test ships, others, like her sister ship USS New York, Employed as a target ship in the atomic bomb tests at Bikini Atoll, were sunk as targets.
Texas, as she avoided Uboats and kamikazes, dodged this fate as well.
After she was stricken in 1948, she was presented to the state of Texas who made her flagship of the Texas Navy and put her on display at San Jacinto military park. Texas was the first battleship memorial museum in the US.
However, she is threatened by age and decay, on her 100th birthday, will you please visit the Battleship Texas Foundation and do your part for the ship that steamed over 700,000 miles for her nation?
Specs:
(1914)
(As built)
Displacement: 27,000 long tons (27,000 t) (design)
Length: 573 ft (175 m)
Beam: 95 ft 3 in (29.03 m)
Draft: 27 ft 10.5 in (8.496 m) (normal)
29 ft 3.25 in (8.9218 m)(full)
Propulsion: 14 Babcock and Wilcox coal-fired boilers with oil spray (replaced by 6 Bureau Express oil-fired boilers in 1925-26); vertical triple-expansion steam engines; 2 shafts; 28,100 ihp
Speed: 21 kn (24 mph; 39 km/h)
Range: As built: 7,060 nautical miles (13,080 km) at 10 knots
Coal: 1,900 tons
Oil: 267 tons
Complement: 1,042
Armament:
As built:
10 × 14 inch/45 caliber guns (356 mm) (5×2)
21 × 5 inch/51 caliber guns (127 mm)
(reduced to 16 guns in 1918)
2 x 3 inch/50 caliber AA guns (76 mm) added 1916
4 × 3-pounder (1.4 kg) guns[2]
4 × 21 inch torpedo tubes (533 mm) (submerged)
After 1925-6 refit:
10 × 14 inch/45 caliber guns (356 mm) (5×2)
16 × 5 inch/51 caliber guns (127 mm)
8 x 3 inch/50 caliber AA guns (76 mm)
torpedo tubes removed
8 x 1.1 inch (28 mm) AA guns (2 x 4) added 1937
After 1942 refit:
10 × 14 inch/45 caliber guns (356 mm) (5×2)
6 × 5 inch/51 caliber guns (127 mm)
10 x 3 inch/50 caliber AA guns (76 mm)
24 × 40 mm Bofors AA guns (6 × 4)
(later increased to 40 guns (10 x 4))
44 × 20 mm Oerlikon cannons
Armor:
Belt: 10 to 12 in (250 to 300 mm) (midships)
6 in (150 mm) (aft)
Bulkheads:
10 in (250 mm) and 11 in (280 mm)
9 in (230 mm) (lower belt aft)
Barbettes:
5 to 12 in (130 to 300 mm)
Turrets:
14 in (360 mm) (face)
4 in (100 mm) (top)
8 in (200 mm) – 9 in (230 mm) (sides)
8 in (200 mm) (rear)
Decks:
1.5 to 3 in (38 to 76 mm)
General characteristics (by 1945)
Displacement: 32,000 long tons (33,000 t) (full load)
Length: 573 ft (175
Beam: 106 ft 0 in (32.31 m)
Draft: 31 ft 6 in (9.60 m)
Propulsion: 2 × dual-acting triple expansion reciprocating steam engines
Speed: 19.72 kn (22.69 mph; 36.52 km/h)
Endurance: 15,400 nmi (17,722 mi; 28,521 km) at 10 kn (12 mph; 19 km/h)
Complement: 1810 officers and men
Sensors and processing systems:
2 × SG surface search radars
1 × SK air search radar
2 × Mk 3 fire control radar
2 × Mk 10 fire control radar
Armament:
10 × 14 in (360 mm)/45 cal guns (5 × 2)
6 × 5 in (130 mm)/51 cal guns
10 × 3 in (76 mm)/50 cal guns
10 × quad 40 mm (1.6 in) mounts
44 × 20 mm (0.79 in) guns
Armor: Same as 1914 characteristics except:
Turrets: 1.75 in (44 mm) added to turret tops
Aircraft carried: 2 × OS2U Kingfisher
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