RE: BB-35, USS Texas
Posted: Tue Apr 09, 2013 4:39 am
edit: double post
ORIGINAL: castor troy
ORIGINAL: msieving1
ORIGINAL: castor troy
exactly my thought when looking at the pictures, she just doesn't look like something to be used in WWII. Really wonder if it made any sense, there was enough of everything else around that could have been used. There were those old, slow BB but she was ancient already. Pretty much like the Schleswig Holstein, opening fire on the Westerplatte 33 years after comissioning.
Wasn't Texas comissioned around roughly the same timeframe? And then you see her having quite an intense duty in WWII, being part of Torch, Overlord, etc.
Texas was commissioned March 12, 1914, so she was less than a year older than HMS Queen Elizabeth and about two years older than USS Nevada. She didn't receive as extensive an update as those ships, but she was very useful for shore bombardment. She was roughly equal in combat power to the British R class battleships, though those ships were a little newer.
There's no comparison to Schleswig Holstein, which was a pre-dreadnought battleship about half the size of Texas. Although Schleswig Holstein was only six years older than Texas, she was obsolete before she was commissioned.
hmm, guess I'll have to look her up a little closer. Thanks for the info, didn't know she was of the age of QE and Nevada. She just looks so damn old (not now, on pics of the 40's already), wonder if it was her design?
All those bolts, the look, to me, she's looking more like a monitor of the late 19th century, not something that would fight in the same war as an Iowa class BB. Being equal to the British R class ships is the biggest surprise to me, thought she would have only been some aged floating gun tubes not being able to deal with a modern heavy cruiser.