USS Texas (BB-35)

The United States Congress authorized the construction of Texas, the second Navy ship to be named after that state, on 24 June 1910. Bids for Texas were accepted from 27 September to 1 December with the winning bid of $5,830,000—excluding the price of armor and armament—submitted by Newport News Shipbuilding. The contract was signed on 17 December and the plans were delivered to the building yard seven days later. Texas keel was laid down on 17 April 1911 at Newport News, Virginia. She was launched on 18 May 1912, sponsored by Miss Claudia Lyon, daughter of Colonel Cecil Lyon, Republican national committeeman from Texas. The ship was commissioned on 12 March 1914 with Captain Albert W. Grant in command. Texass main battery consisted of ten /45 caliber Mark 1 guns, which could fire armor-piercing shells to a range of . Her secondary battery consisted of twenty-one /51-caliber guns. She also mounted four torpedo tubes for the Bliss-Leavitt Mark 8 torpedo, one each on the port-side bow and stern and starboard bow and stern. The torpedo rooms held 12 torpedoes total, plus 12 naval defense mines. Texas and her sister were the only battleships to store and hoist their 14-inch ammunition in cast-iron cups, nose-down. ==Service history==

s, which were replaced with a tripod version during her modernization overhaul in 1925–1926. On 24 March 1914, Texas departed Norfolk Navy Yard and set a course for New York City, making an overnight stop at Tompkinsville, New York, on the night of 26 March. Entering New York Navy Yard on the next day, she spent the next three weeks there undergoing the installation of fire-control equipment. During his stay in New York, President Woodrow Wilson ordered a number of ships of the Atlantic Fleet to Mexican waters in response to tension created when a detail of Mexican federal troops detained an American gunboat crew at Tampico. The problem was quickly resolved locally, but Rear Admiral Henry T. Mayo sought further redress by demanding an official disavowal of the act by the Huerta regime and a 21-gun salute to the American flag. In gratitude, Holland America Line presented Texas with a model of a 17th-century warship, which is displayed with the wardroom silver as of 2014. In 1916, Texas became the first U.S. battleship to mount anti-aircraft guns with the addition of two /50-caliber guns on platforms atop the boat cranes, and the first to control gunfire with directors and rangefinders, analog forerunners of today's computers. World War I antiaircraft gun on platform atop a boat crane on Texas, installed in 1916 and said to be the first AA gun installation on a U.S. battleship Upon her return to active duty with the fleet, Texas resumed a schedule alternating between training operations along the New England coast and off the Virginia Capes and winter fleet tactical and gunnery drills in the West Indies. That routine lasted just over two years until the February-to-March crisis over unrestricted submarine warfare catapulted the U.S. into World War I in April 1917. The 6 April declaration of war found Texas riding at anchor in the mouth of the York River with the other Atlantic Fleet battleships. She remained in the Virginia Capes–Hampton Roads vicinity until mid-August, conducting exercises and training Naval Armed Guard gun crews for service onboard merchant ships. In August, she steamed to New York for repairs, arriving at Base 10 on 19 August and entering the New York Navy Yard soon thereafter. She completed repairs on 26 September and got underway for Port Jefferson that same day. Captain Blue, a protege of Navy Secretary Josephus Daniels, was never court-martialed and remained in command of Texas. The Navy Department held his navigator entirely responsible for the accident. By December, she had completed repairs and moved south to conduct military simulations out of the York River. Mid-January 1918 found the battleship back at New York preparing for the voyage across the Atlantic, including the removal of two more 5-inch guns, reducing the total number aboard to 16. The two fleets rendezvoused about east of the Isle of May and proceeded to the Firth of Forth. Afterward, the American contingent moved to Portland Harbour, England, arriving there on 4 December. The warships arrived off Ambrose light station on Christmas Day, 1918, and entered New York the next day. On 17 July the following year, she was designated BB-35 under the Navy's newly adopted alpha-numeric system of hull classification symbols. and returned to the east coast for overhaul and to participate in a training cruise to European waters with Naval Academy Midshipmen embarked. she entered Norfolk Navy Yard for a major modernization overhaul. The overhaul, which replaced both cage masts with tripod masts, replaced her 14 Babcock & Wilcox coal-fired boilers with 6 Bureau Express oil-fired boilers, There would be a temporary redeployment back to the Atlantic from April to October 1934. During this Pacific period, she served first as flagship for the entire Fleet and, later, as flagship for Battleship Division 1. In 1941, Texas was one of fourteen ships to receive the RCA CXAM-1 radar. World War II Early operations Soon after war broke out in Europe in September 1939, Texas began operating on the Neutrality Patrol, an American attempt to keep the war out of the Western Hemisphere. Later, as the United States moved toward more active support of the Allied cause, the warship began convoying ships carrying Lend-Lease material to the United Kingdom. In February 1941, the U.S. 1st Marine Division was activated aboard Texas. On 1 February, Admiral Ernest J. King hoisted his flag as Commander-in-Chief of the re-formed Atlantic Fleet aboard Texas. Thus, unlike in later operations, she expended only 273 rounds of 14-inch shells and six rounds of 5-inch shells. During her short stay, some of her crewmen went ashore to assist in salvaging some of the ships that had been sunk in the harbor. On 16 November, Texas departed North Africa for the East Coast of the United States in a task force along with , , , four transports, and seven destroyers. Also, during this time additional radio equipment was added, including a device to detect and jam radio-guided missiles. Final exercises were carried out to the south in Dundrum Bay and Belfast Lough. During the final preparations, General Eisenhower came aboard on 19 May to speak to the crew. On 31 May, the ship was sealed and a briefing given to the crew about the upcoming invasion. For the invasion, Texas was designated Bombardment Force Flagship for Omaha Beach, in the Western Taskforce. Her firing area of Omaha was the western half, supporting the U.S. 29th Infantry Division and the U.S. 2nd Ranger Battalion at Pointe du Hoc, and the U.S. 5th Ranger Battalion, which had been diverted to Western Omaha to support the troops at Pointe du Hoc. The Omaha Beach bombardment force consisted of two sections with Texas and the British light cruiser responsible for the western half with Arkansas, and the French light cruisers and responsible for the east. Also assigned to Omaha Beach were the American destroyers , , , , , , , , , and the British destroyers , and . At 02:09 on 3 June, Texas and the rest of the Western Taskforce sailed from Belfast Lough for Normandy. In sight, on a parallel course was a group of British ships, including the battleships and Ramillies. At 07:10 on 4 June, the taskforce had to reverse course due to unacceptable weather in Normandy. Later that evening, off Lundy Island, the taskforce reversed course and headed for and joined the invasion fleet gathering at Area Z. The invasion fleet then headed south toward Normandy and navigated the German minefield, through which minesweepers had cleared channels; not a single Omaha Beach vessel was lost. with provisions and ammunition for the Rangers. Upon their return, the LCVPs brought thirty-five wounded Rangers to Texas for treatment of whom one died on the operating table. Along with the Rangers, a deceased Coast Guardsman and twenty-seven prisoners (twenty Germans, four Italians, and three French) were brought to the ship. The prisoners were fed, segregated, and not formally interrogated aboard Texas, due to the ship bombarding targets or standing by to bombard, before being loaded aboard an LST for transfer to England. Later in the day, her main battery rained shells on the enemy-held towns of Formigny and Trévières to break up German troop concentrations. That evening, she bombarded a German mortar battery that had been shelling the beach. Not long after midnight, German planes attacked the ships offshore, and one of them swooped in low on Texass starboard quarter. Her anti-aircraft batteries opened up immediately but failed to hit the intruder. On the morning of 8 June, her guns fired on Isigny, then on a shore battery, and finally on Trévières once more. Battle of Cherbourg , 25 June 1944 On the morning of 25 June Texas, in company with Arkansas, Nevada, four cruisers and eleven destroyers, closed in on the vital port of Cherbourg to suppress the fortifications and batteries surrounding the town while the U.S. Army's VII Corps attacked the city from the rear. While en route to Cherbourg, the bombardment plan was changed and Task Group 129.2 (TG 129.2), built around Arkansas and Texas, was ordered to move to the east of Cherbourg and engage the guns of Battery Hamburg, a large shore battery composed of four guns. The explosion caused the deck of the pilot house above to be blown upwards approximately , wrecked the interior of the pilot house, and wounded seven. Of the eleven total casualties from the German shell hit, only one man succumbed to his wounds—the helmsman on duty, Christen Christensen. Texass commanding officer, Captain Baker, escaped unhurt and quickly had the bridge cleared. The warship herself continued to deliver her 14-inch shells in two-gun salvos and, in spite of damage and casualties, scored a direct hit that penetrated one of the heavily reinforced gun emplacements to destroy the gun inside at 13:35. At 14:47, an unexploded 24 cm shell was reported. The shell crashed through the port bow directly below the Wardroom and entered the stateroom of Warrant Officer M.A. Clark, but failed to explode. The unexploded shell was later disarmed by a Navy bomb disposal officer in Portsmouth and is currently displayed aboard the ship. Throughout the three-hour duel, the Germans straddled and near-missed Texas over sixty-five times, but she continued her mission firing 206 fourteen-inch shells at Battery Hamburg until ordered to retire at 15:01. Operation Dragoon After Texas underwent repairs at Plymouth from damage sustained at Cherbourg, she drilled in preparation for the invasion of southern France. On 16 July, she departed Belfast Lough and headed for the Mediterranean. After stops at Gibraltar and Oran, Algeria, the battleship arrived in Taranto, Italy on 27 July. Departing Taranto on 11 August, Texas rendezvoused with three French destroyers off Bizerte, Tunisia, and set a course for the French Riviera. She arrived off Saint-Tropez during the night of 14 August and was joined early the next morning by battleship Nevada and cruiser At 04:44 on 15 August, she moved into position for the pre-landing bombardment and, at 0651, opened up on her first target, a battery of five 15 cm guns. The heavy opposition that was expected never materialized, so the landing forces moved inland rapidly. As fire support from Texass guns was no longer required, she departed the southern coast of France on the early morning of 17 August. After a stop at Palermo, Sicily, she left the Mediterranean and headed for New York where she arrived on 14 September 1944. After a brief refresher cruise, she departed Maine in November and set a course, via the Panama Canal, for the Pacific. She made a stop at Long Beach, California, and then continued on to Oahu. She spent Christmas at Pearl Harbor and then conducted maneuvers in the Hawaiian Islands for about a month at the end of which she steamed to Ulithi Atoll. She departed Ulithi on 10 February 1945, stopped in the Mariana Islands for two days of invasion rehearsals, and then she set a course for Iwo Jima. She arrived off Iwo Jima on 16 February, three days before the amphibious landings began. She spent just three days pounding the Japanese defenses on Iwo Jima in preparation for the landing of three Marine Corps Divisions. Though the island of Iwo Jima was not declared to be captured until 16 March, Texas departed from the Volcano Islands on 7 March, and returned to Ulithi Atoll to prepare for the invasion of Okinawa (Operation Iceberg). She departed from Ulithi with Task Force 54, the gunfire support unit, on 21 March, and arrived in the Ryukyu Islands on the 26th. Texas moved in close to Okinawa and began her prelanding bombardment that same day. For the next six days, she fired multiple salvos from her main guns to prepare the way for several Army and Marine divisions to make their amphibious landings on 1 April. Each evening, Texas retired from her bombardment position close to Okinawa, but returned the next morning to resume her bombardments. The enemy ashore, preparing for a defense-in-depth strategy as at Iwo Jima, made no answer. Only air units provided a response, as several kamikaze raids were sent to harass the bombardment group. Texas escaped damage during those attacks. On 1 April, after six days of aerial and naval bombardment, the ground troops went ashore, and for almost two months, Texas remained in Okinawan waters providing gunfire support for the troops and fending off the enemy aerial assault. In performing the latter mission, she claimed one kamikaze kill on her own and claimed three assists. On 14 May she departed Okinawa for the Philippines. End of the war On 17 May, Texas arrived at Leyte in the Philippines and remained there until after the Japanese capitulation on 15 August. She returned to Okinawa toward the end of August and stayed in the Ryukyu Islands until 23 September. On that day, she set a course for the United States with homeward bound troops embarked as part of Operation Magic Carpet. The battleship delivered her passengers to San Pedro, California on 15 October, and celebrated Navy Day there on 27 October before resuming her mission to bring American troops home. She made two round-trip voyages between California and Oahu in November and a third in late December. On 21 January 1946, Texas departed San Pedro and steamed via the Panama Canal to Norfolk where she arrived on 13 February, and soon began preparations for inactivation. On 18 June, she was placed officially in reserve at Baltimore, Maryland. ==Museum ship==

Battleship Texas Commission On 17 April 1947, the Battleship Texas Commission was established by the Texas Legislature to care for the ship. The $225,000 necessary to pay for towing her from Baltimore to San Jacinto was the commission's first task. On 17 March 1948, Texas began her journey to her new anchorage along the busy Houston Ship Channel near the San Jacinto Monument, at San Jacinto State Park, arriving on 20 April, where she was turned over to the State of Texas the next day to serve as a permanent memorial. was displayed as a floating museum in Portland, Oregon from 1925 to 1941 but was scrapped in 1956. When the battleship was presented to the State of Texas, she was commissioned as the flagship of the ceremonial Texas Navy. The funding produced by the Battleship Texas Commission was not up to the task of maintaining the ship. Consequently, years of neglect resulted in cracks and gaps in coated surfaces, water intrusion, and steel deterioration. Paint in interior spaces began to crack, then flake, exposing metal surfaces underneath, which began to rust. At the same time, pipes open to the sea ultimately failed, flooding various voids and bunkers. By 1968, the wooden main deck of the ship was so rotted that rainwater was leaking through the deck into the interior of the ship and pooling in various compartments. The Commission found that replacing the decayed deck timbers would be prohibitively expensive. The solution at the time was to remove the wooden deck and replace it with concrete. The concrete eventually cracked, and again, rainwater began to leak through the main deck into spaces below. In 1971, three local charitable institutions, the Brown Foundation, the Moody Foundation, and the Houston Endowment, together contributed $50,000 to the ship to enable the commission to sandblast and paint the hull. By this time, newspaper articles reported that Texas was "under attack" from neglect and insufficient funding. Nevertheless, Texas was designated a National Historic Mechanical Engineering Landmark by the American Society of Mechanical Engineers in 1975, and a National Historic Landmark by the National Park Service in 1976. Transfer to Texas Parks and Wildlife Department By 1983, concerns with the leadership of the Battleship Texas Commission led to the decision by the State Legislature to turn over control of the ship to the Texas Parks and Wildlife Department (TPWD). 1988–1990 dry dock period On 13 December 1988, Texas was pulled from her berth with great difficulty over the course of six hours by six large tugboats to begin the trip from her berth to Todd Shipyards in Galveston, Texas. Once under tow in the Houston Ship Channel she started taking on water, with a serious breach just forward of the engine rooms. The crew had three pumps and two pumps in continuous service to combat the flooding. During the nine-plus hour transit, the ship's draft increased by in the stern. Texas entered the yard's floating drydock at approximately 22:30 on 13 December, at high tide with only to spare between her hull and the blocks she would sit on. She underwent a 14-month refit that sought to restore the ship to her 1945 condition. While under refit, yard workers sand-blasted paint from not only the hull but also the superstructure and replaced many tons of rusted metal from the hull. Inside the ship, welders and fabricators replaced weakened structural beams and numerous rusted-out deck plates. Topside, workers removed the concrete from the main deck in preparation for a new pinewood deck to be installed later in the refit. In total, more than of steel (amounting to about 15% of the ship's hull) were replaced and more than 40,000 rivets were seal-welded on the underwater hull. On 24 February 1990, tugboats moved Texas from dry dock to Brown & Root's offshore fabrication facility on Green's Bayou for further repairs, and installation of the four mooring attachments on the starboard side of the vessel. Special diamond bit cutting blades had to be used to cut the 4" thick hull steel which was made in Germany and hardened in carbonized beds to reach over 425 HB hardness values according to original blueprints. It was here that the wood deck was also installed and four of the ten mounts of quad 40 mm guns that had been removed in 1948 due to the guns still being actively used by the Navy were installed. On 26 July, the ship was returned to her berth at San Jacinto where the four old inferior 1.1-inch/75-caliber guns that the Navy had given to Texas in 1948 as proxies for the quad 40s were removed and the final six 40 mm quad mounts (salvaged from Missouri, made available during her 1986 modernization ) were installed. Texas then had the haze gray paint scheme that she had worn most of her time in the Atlantic theater (but for the Measure 22 scheme she had worn at Normandy) and then from 1948 to 1990 before her first dry dock refit, replaced with the Measure 21 dark blue paint scheme she had worn in the Pacific theater at the end of World War II in 1945. This made her appearance consistent with her new period correct anti-aircraft armament. Repairs complete, the ship officially reopened to the public on 8 September 1990. Upon returning to her slip at San Jacinto, members of the ship's staff and volunteers worked to restore the interior spaces. One of the provisions of the bond legislation was the Battleship Texas Foundation (BTF), a non-profit support organization, raise $4 million in private funds to supplement the $25 million in bond funds. This would provide a total of $29 million to accomplish the goal. After a lengthy selection process and fee negotiations, TPWD signed a contract with AECOM, on 26 October 2010, to design and develop the plans for Texass dry-berth. The contract called for AECOM to have its preliminary design completed by spring 2011, with the bidding process for the construction of the dry berth and temporary mooring of Texas to begin in mid-2014, and construction completed by summer 2017. However, by February 2019, funds had not yet been secured to commence construction, with efforts instead dedicated to repairs to the ship. On 28 May 2019, it was reported that Texas would be undergoing $35 million worth of repairs and then be moved further up the Texas coast, largely due to a decline in visitors at its current location. Later that year, Texas was closed to the public so necessary preparations could be made for the upcoming restoration process. Leaks In June 2010, a leak on the starboard side of the ship caused Texas to sink two to three feet in her mooring. The leak was precipitated by a burned out pump, which allowed the ship to take on more water than usual. Consequently, a seam separation was pulled below the waterline creating a second leak. Once the leak was discovered, the broken pump was replaced. 105,000 U.S. gal (400,000 L; 87,000 imp gal) of water had to be pumped from the ship. On 9 June 2012 about 30 new leaks, between holes and gaps, were discovered, ultimately necessitating a three-week closure of the ship to visitors; removal of water and repair was complicated by the presence of residual oil in the ship's fuel bunkers. In less than a month, the leaks were fixed. On 12 June 2017, a hole about below the waterline caused the ship to list six degrees to starboard. After emergency repairs, crews pumped out about 105,000 U.S. gal (400,000 L; 87,000 imp gal) of water per minute out of the ship for more than 15 hours. 2022–2025 dry dock period On 31 August 2022, Texas was towed out of her berth to a floating dry dock at Gulf Copper Dry Dock & Rig Repair in Galveston for repairs. The journey took four tugboats pulling the ship through the Houston Ship Channel and ended at around 4 pm. Gulf Copper's old dry dock was no longer usable, so in order to find a quick affordable option for their client Texas, they found a sunken dry dock. The sunken dry dock was a very large 42-year-old dry dock that sank off of the Bahamas. The dry dock had to be salvaged by repairing it after raising it from the seafloor and then cutting its length in half due to heavy damage from its sinking. The first vessel to use this recycled dry dock was Texas. Once repairs are complete, the Battleship Texas Foundation intends to berth the ship in Galveston. As part of the conditions for receiving the $35 million from the Texas government, Texas can only be berthed in the upper coast region of Texas after she is repaired, meaning any part of the Texas coastline from the San Bernard National Wildlife Refuge to the Louisiana border. Texas also received a matching $35 million federal grant from the United States government for her repairs. This $70 million can only be used to repair the battleship and cannot be used on cosmetic-related maintenance like replacing the wooden deck and painting the ship. Also, infrastructure-related projects for the new homeport such as the parking lot or museum buildings cannot be paid for by these funds. Texas later received $25 million more in funding for repairs from the Texas government in 2023. In November 2023, the Port of Galveston board of trustees approved Galveston to become the new home for Texas. She left dry dock on 5 March 2024 but will receive more repairs while afloat for the next 18 to 24 months to her superstructure, smaller guns, and interior spaces. On 4 March 2025, the Galveston Wharves Board voted unanimously to offer Pier 15 as a permanent docking berth for Texas to reside at. As of June 2025, Texas is still under repair but offering restoration tours every Sunday. The Battleship Texas Foundation expects a grand reopening sometime in 2027. Commemoration Texas was the first and oldest of the eight U.S. battleships that became permanent floating museums; the other battleships honored in this way are , , , , , , and . Texas is also one of the oldest surviving modern naval ships, having turned 110 years old on 12 March 2024. Radio commemorations occur on Texas yearly during Museum Ship Weekend and Pearl Harbor Day. Amateur radio operators from the Battleship Texas Amateur Radio operate on those two occasions under the Federal Communications Commission callsign NA5DV, similar to the original callsign NADV. The Texas Legislature designated the battleship Texas as the official "State Ship of Texas" in 1995. ==Media==

in the background is the San Jacinto Monument Texas has appeared in several films prior to and since her retirement. Her cinema debut, though brief, was in the final scene of the 1937 film Boy of the Streets starring Jackie Cooper and Maureen O'Conner. The 1966 Steve McQueen film The Sand Pebbles shot some scenes aboard the ship, but these were removed from the final cut of the movie and subsequently lost. For the 2001 film Pearl Harbor, Texas was chosen as a filming location because she is the only surviving American battleship that was built and in service prior to 1941, and her exterior and interior components look very similar to other battleships that were built in the 1910s and 1920s and were present on Battleship Row during the attack. Numerous exterior and interior shots were filmed on Texas, with actors using the main deck and numerous interior areas. The interior scenes of the aircraft carrier were also shot inside Texas. For the 2006 films Flags of Our Fathers and Letters from Iwo Jima actual film footage of the exterior of Texas taken by the film crew were used to depict her fighting at Iwo Jima. Close-up shots of actors manning the smaller guns of Texas also were used. The only thing added in post-production was computer-generated imagery depicting the main turrets turning and firing. Texas appears as a multiplayer map for Call of Duty: Vanguard and Call of Duty: WWII. Players fight on the deck of the ship as it is at sea during World War II. Despite the name, however, the layout of the ship does not match the design of the real USS Texas (BB-35). On 27 February 2026, the VTuber Texa35VT debuted under the VFleet Project as a character representing USS Texas (BB-35). VFleet Project's stated goals include raising awareness of and support for nonprofit foundations responsible for the preservation and restoration of historic ship museums. ==See also==