Battleship Texas

Grand Old Lady of the Sea by Martha Rogers

This battleship is now over a 100 years old and has a grand history of service to our nation. Here she is shown with the original twin steel towers or lattice masts which were replaced in an overhaul in 1925.

She was first launched on May 18, 1912 and commissioned on March 12, 1914. In 1916, the Texas became the first of U.S. battleships to be outfitted for war. Anti-aircraft guns and two 50 caliber guns were mounted on platforms atop the boat cranes. They were the first to be controlled with directors and rangefinders, analog forerunners of today's computers. Below is a picture of the these first gun towers.

 

In WWI she made numerous sorties into the North Sea in support of other navy vessels carrying troops. Her service with the Grand Fleet included occasional forays to reinforce the British squadron in the North Sea when threatened by German units. The fleet alternated between bases at Scapa Flow and the Firth of Forth in Scotland.

Here the crew poses on top of one of the turrets' main battery guns in 1918. 

After an overhaul in 1919, she became the first American battleship to launch an airplane, a British built Sopwith Camel, at Guantanamo Bay. Later that year, her captain, Nathan Twining, employed naval aircraft to spot the fall of shells during a main artery exercise. As a result, more floatplanes were added to all of the battleships. 

After another overhaul, her fire-control equipment was upgraded, and her armament was increased to eight 3-inch guns and torpedo tubes were removed. Six of the larger guns were relocated to the main deck. She was designated as the flagship of the United States Fleet and resumed duty along the eastern seaboard.

In WWII, she escorted war convoys across the Atlantic and shelled beaches for the North African campaign and the Normandy landings where she played an important role in the defense by being closer to shore and bombarding the coast with shells while troops were sent from the larger ships a little further out. Texas was a part of a combined US-British flotilla of 702 ships which included seven battleships and five heavy cruisers.

After that, she sailed to Cherbourg to join the Arkansas in defense against the German fleet. The Texas was shelled and wrecked the pilot house. Of the seven injured, only one didn't make it, helmsman Christian Christianson. Captain Baker escaped with no injuries and had the bridge cleaned. Then she rejoined the battle.

At one point, on June 25, 1944, Texas was hit again by an explosive that turned out to be a dud. The ship's Admiral Carleton Bryant saved the dud for posterity. Here he's shown in the left picture with the dud along with Captain Charles Baker. That shell became part of the museum display on the ship. The one on the right is a shot of her being fired at on that date.

                                                

After her performance there, she was transferred to the Pacific Fleet and provided gunfire support during the battles of Iwo ima and Okinawa. She spent five years as part of the Pacific Fleet.

At the end of WWII, on August 14, 1945, she returned to Okinawa and stayed there until September 23 when she became a part of Operation Magic Carpet. She set a course on that day with homeward bound troops to San Pedro, California on October 15. She made two more round-trip voyages to bring home American soldiers in November and a third in November. From San Pedro she steamed toward Norfolk, Virginia by way of the Panama Canal where she was prepared for inactivation. On June 18, 1946, she was officially placed in reserve at the shipyards in Baltimore, Maryland.

In April of 1947, the Texas Legislature established the Battleship Texas Commission to care for the ship. On March17,1948, at a cost of $225,000, she was towed from Baltimore to Laporte, Texas where was anchored in the Houston Ship Channel near the San Jacinto Monument where she was to serve as a permanent memorial. On the 21st of April, she was ceremoniously decommissioned and nine days later, her name was struck from the Naval Vessel Register and became the first permanent battleship memorial museum in the US. She then was commissioned as the flagship of the Texas Navy.

This is where Texas sat as a Memorial Museum until August 31, 2022.

On that day, preparations began to move her to Galveston for much needed repairs at a cost far more than what it cost to bring her from Norfolk. She will be repaired and refurbished for $35 million as opposed to scrapping her for $30 million. After that she will have to make it on her own. The Texas Parks and Wildlife Department will no longer pay the foundation for its upkeep. 

Texans love their history and they love the battleship. With the number of people wanting to see it preserved, we will find a way to keep it as a reminder of her part in preserving our country's freedom.

 Thousands upon thousands have visited the memorial and climbed around and explored the ship. Our three sons loved going down to LaPorte and having a fun day at the ship with a picnic lunch. Their dad and i usually had as much fun as they did.

Martha Rogers is a multi-published author and writes a weekly devotional for ACFW. Martha and her husband Rex live in Houston, Texas where they are active members of First Baptist Church. They are the parents of three sons and grandparents to eleven grandchildren and great-grandparents to six. Martha is a retired teacher with twenty-eight years teaching Home Economics and English at the secondary level and eight years teaching Freshman English at the college level. She is a member of ACFW, ACFW WOTS chapter in Houston, and serves as President of the writers’ group, Inspirational Writers Alive. 

 

The Ghost Army

By Marilyn Turk

With this month’s celebration of the 75th anniversary of the D-Day invasion in World War II, much has been written about how the final phase of the war was won by Allied Forces. A combined force of over three million troops from the United States and eleven other countries participated in the largest seaborne invasion ever carried out.
But did you know about the Ghost Army that was also part of the plan to overthrow Hitler’s Army? A couple of months after the D-Day invasion, this secret army arrived in France with a special mission: to deceive, mislead and befuddle the enemy by conducting a traveling road show.

Fake convoy

Officially known as the 1st Headquarters Special Troops, this 1100-man Army unit was trained to impersonate other Allied Army units. Many of these soldiers were recruited from art schools, advertising agencies and other occupations that encouraged creative thinking. In civilian life, they had been artists, actors, set designers and engineers.

There were four basic tactics the ghost army used to deceive the German Army: Visual deception, Sonic deception, radio deception and atmosphere.

Fake airplane

The visual deception was carried out by the 603rd camouflage engineers which used inflatable jeeps, cannons, tanks, trucks and airplanes which the men would inflate with air compressors, then partially camouflage them so the enemy could still see them. They created dummy airfields, troop camps (complete with laundry hanging on clotheslines), motor pool, artillery batteries and tank formations.

Inflatable rubber tank

Under the Signal Service Company, sonic deception was carried out. Aided by engineers from Bell Labs, a team went to Fort Knox and recorded sounds of armored and infantry units onto a series of sound effects records. These sounds were “mixed” to match the scenario they wanted the enemy to believe. Recorded on state-of-the-art wire recorders (predecessor to the tape recorder), the sounds were played with powerful amplifiers and speakers and could be heard fifteen miles away.

Sound deception unit with 500 lb. speakers

The radio deception was also carried out by the signal company. Creating “spoof radio,” special operators created fake radio transmissions, impersonating radio operators from real army units. They were so skilled in mimicking a departing operator’s method of sending Morse Code that the enemy couldn’t tell that the real unit with its real operator had moved on.

Inflatable truck

“Atmosphere” was the term used to describe the theatrical effects which supplemented the other deceptions. Using various techniques, this unit simulated actual units deployed elsewhere by using copies of their insignia, painting it on vehicles, and pretending they were being deployed as if they were regimental headquarters units. Trucks were driven in convoys with only a couple of men seated near the rear to simulate a truck full of infantry under the canvas cover. The unit’s members put their theatrical skills to use as well, engaging in "playacting, like pretending to be MPs (military police) who would stand at crossroads wearing divisional insignia. Other actors spent time at French cafes near the war's front to spread gossip among the spies who might be there, to, as one former Ghoster put it, "order some omelets and talk loose." Some actors would also play the parts of Allied generals, dressing up like officers and visiting towns where enemy spies could see them.

Fake artillery 

All these tactics were amazingly effective at creating believable scenes. From their landing in Normandy until the Allied Forces crossed into the Rhine River Valley, these men staged more than twenty battlefield deceptions, or “illusions” as the men preferred to call them, with some taking place just a few hundred yards from the front lines.

Kept classified as a military secret until 1996, the Ghost Army is estimated to have saved tens of thousands of soldiers’ lives with its deceptions and to have been instrumental in several Allied victories in Europe.

Have you ever heard of the Ghost Army? Do you know of anyone who served in it?

Marilyn Turk’s roots are in the coastal South, raised in Louisiana, moved to Georgia, then retired to Florida. Calling herself a “literary archaeologist,” she loves to discover stories hidden in history. She is the author of two World War II novels, The Gilded Curse and Shadowed by a Spy, and the four-book Coastal Lights Legacy series set in 1800s Florida—Rebel Light, Revealing Light, Redeeming Light, and Rekindled Light—featuring lighthouse settings. Marilyn’s novella, The Wrong Survivor, is in the Great Lakes Lighthouse Brides collection and Love’s Cookin’ at the Cowboy Café, in the Crinoline Cowboys collection. She also writes for Daily Guideposts Devotions.


She lives with her husband, 10-year-old grandson Logan, and a 17-year-old cat. When not writing, Marilyn can be found playing tennis, gardening, walking, fishing, or kayaking. She and her husband have visited over 100 lighthouses so far, but the RV is ready to travel and go see more. Marilyn is the director of the Blue Lake Christian Writers Retreat in Alabama, www.bluelakecwr.com. Website: @http://pathwayheart.com

If you're interested in World War II history, you might like the books I wrote that take place during that era.

Battleship Texas Plus Give Away

Grand Old Lady 

by Martha Rogers

Texas lays claim to many firsts, bests, largest, and finest, but in one area, that claim is well deserved. On May 18, 1912, battleship Texas was launched. In March of 2014, she was commissioned by the United States Navy. She is now the oldest commissioned battleship still in existence.

During her stay in New York for installment of fire control equipment, President Theodore Roosevelt ordered several ships from the American Navy to sail to Mexican waters where USS Texas became involved in a skirmish known as the “Tampico Incident.” She returned to New York in December, 1914, after the battle to undergo repairs. She remained there until February, 1915.

In 1916, she made numerous sorties into the North Sea. She became the first battleship to mount anti-aircraft guns with the addition of two 3-inch (76mm)/50 caliber guns on platforms atop the boat cranes, and the first to control gunfire with directors and rangefinders, analog forerunners of today's computers.

This is how she looked in 1916 during those days of WW I. She also played a

role in the Armistice in November, 1918 when she accompanied the Grand Fleet (Great Britain’s navy) to meet the surrendering German Fleet.

After the war, she served as an escort to the ship carrying President Wilson to the Paris Peace Conference. She returned to New York with other warships on Christmas Day 1918.

Another first occurred in1919 when she became the first American battleship to launch an airplane. Lt. Commander E. O. McDonnell flew a British Sopwith Camel off her deck. She served as a plane guard and navigational aid for a successful attempt by Curtiss NC flying boat to become the first airplane to cross the Atlantic. Then in July 1919 she became a part of the Pacific Fleet where she spent the five or so years. Here she was designated BB-35 under the Navy’s new alpha-numeric hull classification symbols.

In 1927, she was outfitted with tripod masts which replaced the two large steel towers or lattice masts. She underwent numerous repairs and re-outfitting

overhauls in the post-war years. After the overhaul in 1927, she was designated the flagship of the United States Fleet and returned to duty in the Atlantic. In 1928, she escorted President Calvin Coolidge to Havana, Cuba for a Pan-American Conference.

This was followed by a brief tour of duty in the Pacific and then back to the Atlantic in 1931. In December 1938, Texas received for testing the first shipborne radar designed and made by a commercial company, RCA. She was included in fourteen ships in 1941 that received the RCA CXAM-1 radar.

In February, 1941, the US 1^st Marine Division was activated on her deck and Admiral Ernest J. King hoisted his flag as Commander-in-Chief fo the re-formed Atlantic Fleet.

Then she became involved in WWII and was outfitted with heavier artillery. Her main duty was as convoy-escort in various areas and then and as an escort for both troop carrying transports and cargo ships to and from the United Kingdom with New York as her home port. She saw extensive service in those days. On one of those escort missions, a young Walter Cronkite was aboard and his experiences with the ship launched his career as a war correspondent.

The Battleship Texas was also involved in the invasion on D-Day, 1944. During the heat of the battle at Omaha, she was able to get to within 3000 yards of the water’s edge and fired her main guns. She fired upon snipers and machine gun nests hidden just off the beach and attacked an enemy anti-aircraft battery west of Vierville. After this, she was engaged in other battles, but returned to New York to undergo repairs.

From there she saw duty in the Pacific at Iwo Jimo and Okinawa. In September

of 1944, she set sail for the United States bound with troops in what was called, “Operation Magic Carpet.” She made two round trip voyages between Oahu and San Diego to bring troops home. In June of 1945, she was officially placed in reserve at Baltimore and inactivated.

On April 17, 1947, the Battleship Texas Commission was established by the Texas Legislature, in 1948 she began her journey home to Texas where she was commissioned as the flagship of the Texas Navy.

Today she sits near the San Jacinto Battleground monument and state park on the Houston Ship Channel. Needless to say she had to go through numerous

repairs through the years. She was the first permanent battleship memorial museum in the US. She was designated as a National Historic Landmark by the National Park Service in 1976.

When my boys were little, we took excursions to visit the ship. They loved being able to climb up on the artillery and pretend as well as climb between decks. Seeing the inside of a ship I’d seen in newsreels fascinated me as well. Even then the writer in me wanted to conjure up stories to go along with the sights we saw.

At the age of 103, she’s a grand old lady and is one of the oldest surviving naval warships. Other state named battleships have followed Texas’ footsteps to become floating museums.   

Have you ever visited a battleship or aircraft carrier or other Navy ship? 
Leave a comment and receive a copy of my latest novella, Always on My Mind which is part of a collection of novellas with Elvis Presley song titles. Be sure to put your email address in the comment so I can contact you if you win.

Cassie Miller receives a fellowship grant to study piano at a well-known Boston conservatory, where Marc Rossi monitors the program. When strange events cause both Cassie and Marc to appear unprofessional and irresponsible, they work together to find out who wants to sabotage their careers.  Cassie’s goal is a career in music, but attraction sizzles between her and Marc. Together can they discover who is responsible for the accidents and errors that nearly cost Cassie the fellowship and Marc his job and find love as well?

Martha Rogers is a free-lance writer and multi-published author. She was named Writer of the Year at the Texas Christian Writers Conference in 2009. She is a member of ACFW and writes the weekly Verse of the Week for the ACFW Loop. ACFW awarded her the Volunteer of the Year in 2014.  Martha is a frequent speaker for writing workshops and is the director of the Texas Christian Writers Conference. She is a retired teacher and lives in Houston with her husband, Rex. Their favorite pastime is spending time with their eleven grandchildren and four great-grandchildren.