World War Two at Sea: The Last Battleships (Images of War) by Philip Kaplan

Author:Philip Kaplan [Kaplan, Philip]
Language: eng
Format: epub, pdf
Tags: HISTORY / Military / Naval
ISBN: 9781473834521
Publisher: Pen and Sword
Published: 2014-02-18T22:00:00+00:00

The USS Louisiana off the California coast in April 1908.

Battleship trainees at Great Lakes Naval Training Station, Illinois, 1918.

HMS Prince of Wales in 1902.

The USS Missouri, BB-63, is the last of a line of warships called Missouri. The first of these was a steam-powered wooden side-wheeled frigate completed in 1842. She had two paddle wheels and was armed with two ten-inch guns and eight eight-inch guns. On 26 August 1843, a crewman dropped a demijohn of spirits of turpentine in a store room. A fire ignited and spread so rapidly that containment was not possible. In a few hours the burnt-out hulk sank. More than 200 of her crew were rescued by the British ship-of-the-line Malabar. The second Missouri was an iron-clad centre-wheel steam sloop of the Confederate States of America. She was launched in April 1863 and was used mainly to transport workers around the coast of Louisiana. At the end of the Civil War, she was surrendered to the U.S. Navy.

BB-11, the first warship to bear the name Missouri, was launched 28 December 1901 and was a 12,362-ton battleship with a complement of forty officers and 521 men. She was armed with four twelve-inch guns, sixteen six-inch guns and a variety of smaller weapons. While engaged in target practice on 13 April 1904, a flare-back from one of her guns ignited a fire causing more than a thousand pounds of gunpowder to burn. Many of the ship’s spaces quickly filled with deadly gas which suffocated five officers and twenty-nine men. In December 1907, BB-11 was among sixteen white-painted battleships to pass in review before President Theodore Roosevelt at Hampton Roads, Chesapeake Bay. The Great White Fleet then departed on a celebrated fourteen-month world cruise. She later served as a training ship and, in June and July 1912, helping protect American lives at Guantanamo Bay during the Cuban Revolution. She served as a training vessel with the Atantic Fleet during the First World War, as well as transporting troops to and from France. She was scrapped in January 1922, under the terms of the Washington Naval Arms Limitation Treaty.

The final battleship Missouri, BB-63, was commissioned on 11 June 1944. Speaking at her launch ceremonies, Senator Harry S.Truman said: “The time is surely coming when the people of Missouri can thrill with pride as the Missouri and her sister ships, with batteries blazing, sail into Tokyo Bay.”

“We stopped off at the Hollywood USO for some coffee and doughnuts, and chatted with some of the hostesses. One of them came up with some tickets for a TV show and we decided to go. It was the popular ‘Truth of Consequences’ show with Jack Bailey as MC. We got there early and got seats in the front row. As they do in these shows, they always have a sub-host come out and ‘warm-up’ the audience. The show was to be taped for showing an hour later. It always opened with the audience laughing it up a lot. What were they laughing at? On this particular show, it was me.

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