Museum Ship 1948-Present:
After her decommissioning, the USS Texas was offered up for use as a museum ship. Very quickly, the state of Texas responded. On April 17, 1947, only six days after she was decommissioned, the Battleship Texas Commission was established by the Texas Legislature to care for the ship. Texas quickly met all the requirements, including the $225,000 necessary to tow her from Baltimore to San Jacinto. On March 17, 1948, the Texas began her journey to a brand new anchorage on the Houston Ship Channel near the San Jacinto Monument, at San Jacinto State Park in Texas. she arrived there on April 20, 1948, and was turned over to the State of Texas on the 21st to serve as a permanent memorial.
The 21st of April is significant because oit was the date of the 1836 Battle of San Jacinto against Anta Anna, when the Texas forces defeated him there, and Santa Anna, the president of Mexico at the time, surrendered and agreed to Texas Independence. This led to the creation of the Republic of Texas, which joined the US as a state in 1845. Afterwards, the USS Texas name was struck from the official US Navy Vessel Register on April 30, 1948.
In being established as a memorial museum ship, the Texas established another "first," that of being the first permanent battleship memorial museum in the US. When She the battleship was presented to the State of Texas, she was commissioned by the state as the permanent flagship of the Texas Navy.
She has remained such ever since.
As a native Texan myself, I can remember on two occasions and a young man 10 and then 13 years old, while visiting relatives in Houston, going aboard the vessel in the 1960s.
By the 1980s, however, the USS Texas was in a state of disrepair, particularly below the waterline. The State of Texas, and the people of Texas came to her rescue.
In 1983, the responsibility for the upkeep and maintenance of the battleship was transferred form the original Texas Commission, the Texas Parks and Wildlife Department, The Commission was a small agency, and was not able to continue to amass the funding or the personnel necessary to maintain the Texas. Texas Parks and wildlife is a large, very well staffed and funded agency, better suited for the long-term viability of the vessel.
In addition, funding was raised, with the people of Texas and the government of Texas coming up with the funds to take her from her berth in 1988 and placed in dry dock until 1990 for extensive repairs and conditioning for her long term upkeep as a museum/memorial ship. This included significant updates and changes to her berth near the San Jacinto Memorial.
In December of 1988, Texas was pulled from her berth with great difficulty by six large tugboats to begin al 56 mile trip to Todd Shipyards in Galveston, Texas. Once under tow she started taking on water, through breach just forward of the engine rooms. The crew had three 4 in and two 2 in pumps in continuous service to combat the flooding. During the nine hour trip, the ship's draft increased 18 to 20 in and Texas ultimately entered the yard's floating dry-dock with only 6 in to spare between her hull and the blocks she would have sit on. 16 months later, on February 24, 1990, tugboats moved Texas from that dry-dock to a repair facility on Green's Bayou where her new deck was installed. Repairs complete, the ship officially reopened to the public on September 8, 1990.
Texas Parks and Wildlife has an ongoing program, that started soon after her return, to restore her interior spaces on room at a time.
Since then, a plan to dry dock the vessel at her San Jacinto Memorial berth, has been proposed. The Master Plan was formally adopted bin 2004 by Texas Parks and wildlife. The Texas Legislature put it to the Texas voters the voters. On November 6, 2007, Texas voters approved $25 million in funds to dry-berth the ship to prevent any further deterioration from the corrosive waters of the ship channel.
After the vote, BTF contracted a independent maritime engineering firm to make a survey of the ship to determine her condition. The survey reflected that her keel and main supporting internal structure was sufficiently strong to support the weight of the ship in a dry berth. In March 2009 the funds were released for the dry berthing project to commence.
In October 2010, a contract was signed with AECOM, to design and develop the plans for the dry-berth. Following a federally mandated environmental assessment, the bidding process for construction of the dry
berth and temporary mooring of Texas began in mid-2014. Construction is to be completed by mid to late 2017.
Specifications for the USS Texas, at the end of World War II:
Designation: BB
Length: 573 ft
Beam: 95 ft
Displacement: 32,000 tons (full load)
Propulsion: 6 oil fired boilers, 2 shafts
Speed: 21 knots
Range: 8,500 miles at 10 knots
Crew : 1,042
Armament:
- 10 x 14 in/45 caliber main guns
- 06 X 5 in/51 caliber secondary guns
- 10 X 3 in/50 caliber Anti-aircrft guns
- 24 x 40mm Bofors anti-aircraft guns (6 x 4 mounts)
- 44 x 20mm Oerlikon anti-aircraft guns)
Armor:
- Belt:12 in amidships, 6 in aft
- Bulkheads: 10 in and 11 in lower belt aft
- Barbettes: 5 to 12 in
- Turrets: 14 in face, 4 in top, 8 in sides
- Decks: 1.5 to 3 in
Post Script:
I visited The USS Texas in August of 2014. It was the first time I had been back to the ship since 1969, 45 years earlier. She looked great! You can see three pictures I took while there above...the first three pictures.
The Kit:
This is a brand new kit by Trumpeter, announced in late 2014 and delivered to outlets in the US in the Summer of 2015. One of my favorite suppliers, who have a strong online presence and a very decent brick and mortar store in Georgia, is Free Time Hobbies. I got mine from them, after being on their waiting list.
It is a GREAT model. Little or no flash or residue from the molding process and lots of delicate detail parts, including all of the photo etch railing for the vessel, and various sensors and other details in PE. It will make for a nice build.
It comes with a total of 13 plastic frets (two in clear plastic for the 2 OSU Kingfisher aircraft) and 3 Photo Etch metal frets. There are also 14 plastic parts that are individual parts for the main decks, deck houses and the stand. A total of 672 plastic parts and 138 metal parts, or 810 parts altogether.
There are two decals sheets with a total of 58 decals.
There is an excellent build guide that goes through all of the steps of building the model in typical, descriptive and intuitive Trumpeter fashion. Also, in keeping with most 1/350 scale Trumpeter models, there is a full color paint guide for the vessel, depicting it in its current colors as a museum ship, which is a basic dark Sea Gray color for the vertical and horizontal surfaces.
This model of the USS Texas, Battleship...out of the box...lives up to the reputation for quality and detail we have come to expect from Trumpeter. has established for itself.
I intend to build the vessel in a World War II configuration, with both Kingfisher aircraft mounted on their catapult atop the center 14" gun turret. I will choose the paint scheme from the Atlantic escort duties leading up to the invasion of North Africa and thereafter, the D-Day invasion, or the camo scheme in the Pacific. I just haven't decided yet...I like all three.
Here's how it all looked out of the box: