As a former New York-class battleship of the US Navy, USS Texas has all the elite qualities of a powerful battleship class.
BB-35 has a full load displacement of 28,367 long tons, length of 175m (573 ft), beam of 29m (1), and maximum draft of 9m (29 ft 7 in). Armor protection reached 12 inches at the belt, 3 inches at the decks, 14 inches at the primary turrets, and 12 inches at the conning tower.
Her propulsion system was powered by 14 x Babcock & Wilcox coal-fired boilers with oil spray, that deliver 28,100 hp, to feed 2 x Vertical triple-expansion steam engines driving 2 x Shafts astern. USS Texas could reach a top speed of 21 knots, a range of 7,060 nmi at 10 knots. The crew was 1,042 officers and men.
In the days of battleships, their weapons were concentrated in large caliber guns. For the USS Texas, she was armed with 10 x 356 mm caliber guns, 21 × 127 mm caliber guns, 4 × 47 mm caliber guns, 2 × 37 mm guns, and 4 × 533 mm submerged torpedo tubes.
Soon after her commissioning, Texas saw action in Mexican waters following the “Tampico Incident” and made numerous sorties into the North Sea during World War I. She fired the first American shots of World War 1 on April 19th, 1917 – against a German U-boat. She then spent time with the British Grand Fleet until the end of the war in November 1918. She accompanied the American political contingent en route to the Paris Peace Conference that December.
During the refit period of 1925-1926, Texas was remodeled with torpedo bulges, increasing its beams to 32.31 m and displacing 32,000 long tons. The engine has been modernized with 6 x Bureau Express oil-fired boilers, increasing the range to 15,400 nautical miles. Weapon configurations had also been reworked to add a single catapult, for the launching and recovery of up to three floatplane aircraft carried.
When the United States formally entered World War II in 1941, Texas escorted war convoys across the Atlantic and later shelled Axis-held beaches for the North African campaign and the Normandy Landings before being transferred to the Pacific Theater late in 1944 to provide naval gunfire support during the Battles of Iwo Jima and Okinawa.
