Pages

Monday, August 1, 2011

The Last Mission of USS Texas (BB-35)

Shown here is the battleship USS Texas (BB-35) being towed up the Elizabeth River and past Norfolk Naval Shipyard in 1948, enroute to her new home in La Porte, Texas. She currently serves as a state memorial at the San Jacinto Battleground State Historic Park.
Newport News Shipbuilding launched the 27,000-ton warship in 1912. Homeported in Norfolk for much of her operational career, Texas served in many World War I and World War II campaigns, including Operation Torch, Operation Overlord ("D-Day"), Iwo Jima, and Okinawa. At the end of the war, she was decommissioned. She was spared the fate of many of her sister ships (towed out to the Pacific and sunk by an atomic bomb in the Binki Atoll tests), when the state of Texas put up the money to have the ship towed and permanently berthed.

No comments:

Post a Comment