Going to see the battlewagon Texas on Sunday,Dec 11th

[crashaz]

Going to climb all over and take a bunch of pics since I am staying this weekend in Houston to work on Saturday. If anyone is in the area they are welcome to come join me.... just be aware I take my time looking around at everything. :icon_lol:

Will add another ship to my list!

CV USS Yorktown Charleston, SC
DD USS Laffey

BB USS Alabama - Mobile, AL
SS USS Drum

SS USS Pampanito - San Francisco, CA

CV USS Midway - San Diego,CA

BB USS Arizona - Pearl Harbor, HI
BB USS Missouri
BB USS Utah
SS USS Bowfin

Texas is going to be unique.... a WW1 era battleship.

[PRB]

Oh, you will love it. She's well preserved, and painted in authentic 1945 Measure 21 paint, including the blue deck! The engine room is awesome. Giant tripple expansion steam engines. Amazing. It's been a few years since I was there. Hopefully she's in as good a condition now as she was then. They said they were constantly opening up more compartments and restoring them and making them available to the general riff-raff like us. I gotta go back!

[CP1207]

Don't forget to come to Cleveland and see the USS Cod.
Really well preserved sub.
Also the freighter William G. Mather is nearby
http://www.glsc.org/mather_museum.php

[Willy]

One of these days, I need to go to Galveston and visit my old ship. (see avatar)

[PRB]

One of the many interesting things about Texas, on this 7th of December, is that she and Arizona are from the same "generation" of battlewagons. That massive tripod fore-mast with the fire control "house" on top, so similar to the one on BB-39 in all the iconic photos of the broken ship, half toppled over. The secondary battery in casemates, the shape of the hull up front, the big cranes amidships. You can't take your eyes away. Get the DVD they sell of how the ship was restored, and how she almost sank at the peer from neglect in the 1970s and 80s. Yikes!

[Allen]

I was going to say it is srange that a ship that old is still in the water give that the Navy would never ask for her back do to age. "Googling" around the web it says that there are plans to do just that.

[burcham8]

Hope you'll go see the USS North Carolina in Wilmington. Maybe the most beautiful of all battleship classes.

Marc Burcham

[jhefner]

If anyone gets a chance to do so; I highly recommend taking the "hard hat" tour of the Battleship Texas. It is only offered a few times a year, but gives tour members access to areas normally off limits to visitors:

http://www.usstexasbb35.com/hard-hat-tours.htm

Just a few of my pictures from my tour and a latter tour with my son of the engine room. I was throughly worn out by the time the hard hat tour was over; but it was worth it:

http://www.isses.org.uk/gallery2/main.php?g2_itemId=667

-James

[Jagdflieger]

Lucky you! I've seen the USS Missouri, USS Alabama and the US North Carolina so the USS Texas is high on my list of things to do.

[Willy]

I've seen USS North Carolina as a kid and later USS Alabama a couple of times as an adult. I never went and saw the Yorktown while I was stationed in Charleston mostly because with 4 small kids, money was tight and trying to deal with small kids on a ship is something I didn't relish.

Just wondering if anyone else here has been a crewmember on a ship that's now a museum?

[PRB]

I've seen North Carolina, Texas, and Alabama. I think North Carolina is the best preserved and the most interesting museum because you can visit turret 2 barbette, all the way down to the power handling lavel at the bottom. It's really amazing.

I wasn't a member of USS Midway's crew, but the ship was part of a carrier task force that included us (Enterprise) in 1983. Does that count? :)