"The power of an underwater explosion is so great that there is no way to design a protection system that does not involve absorbing and localizing the damage through the sacrifice of some compartments ... "
forward on the starboard side and aft and down on the port. The alarm could be sounded at any minute and catch hundreds sleeping, other hundreds eating, or bathing or painting. As men ran along passageways or dove down ladders and began to spin gun elevating wheels, start ammunition hoists , run out firehoses, or lay out bandages and tourniquets, the sound of watertight doors being dogged and armored hatches clanging shut resounded through the ship. Only the few gunners, gun director crews, signalmen , and officers on the bridge and in the conning tower saw anything of the battle. The overwhelming majority of the crew were deep within the ship, cut off from fresh air, the light of day, ornews of the engagement. Men in the engine rooms, boiler rooms, and magazines often could not distinguish between the roar and shock of their own guns firing or the enemy's shells arriving. There was often not the slightest indication of winning or losing until either the order came to secure from stations or the lights went out and the water rushed in. But most had specific tasks that kept them too busy to think about it.
"The dreadnought battleship represented an illusion of invincibility -in a world of increasing vulnerability." The most nervewrackingjobs were had by the damage control and medical teams. It was their lot to stand by and wait while hell broke loose and if the ship took a hit it was their duty to go running towards the flames or the inrushing water to make the best of a bad situation. The spaces below the lower armored deck are a daunting labyrinth of watertight compartments, a steel honeycomb designed to limit the spread of fire or flooding from torpedo or mine damage. This structural toughness , the ability to take punishment and keep the big guns shooting, is what defined the battleship. The weapon that finally made the battleship obsolete was the aircraft-launched topedo. In World War I and earlier the torpedo had been the dreadnoughts' most dangerous foe. Between the wars it was recognized that battleships would face air attack in the future, but the expectation was that planes would drop armor piercing bombs from high altitude to punch through deck armor. This in fact happened to the Arizana and the Tirpitz, but they were stationary targets attacked in port . Throughout the war high altitude bombers consistently missed anything that could move. Dive bombers scored many hits, but their bombs were of nowhere near the power of the plunging shells which the battleships had been built to withstand. In nearly all cases of aircraft sinking battleships, it was by means of torpedoes. The power of an underwater explosion is so great that there is no way to design an underwater protection system that does not involve absorbing and localizing the damage through the sacrifice of some compartments and thus some buoyancy. One or two torpedoes almost never sink a battleship, but it was just a matter of attrition to breach enough compartments and the ship attacked was guaranteed to sink. Battleships may have been far harder to sink than any other vessel but they could stiJI be sunk and by weapons vastly cheaper than their own guns. And in their role as capital ship they were superseded by the flexibility, speed, and range of the carrier and her aircraft. In 1850 a major warship could cover 150 miles in 24 hrs and throw about 1500lb of shot per minute to about 2 miles . By 1910 a battleship could steam 500 miles a day and throw 15,000lb of shell per minute 12 miles. By 1940 this increased to 700 miles and the SEA HISlDRY, SPRING 1984
throw to 20,000!b hurled nearly 20 miles. However, by that date an aircraft carrier could steam the same distance and its planes could cover over 150 miles per hour and deliver 40,000!b of ordinance. The Texas was built as part of that first dramatic upsurge of accelerating escalation . Within ten years of her building ships were being built that she would have had smaJI hope of survival against. After her launching the navy kept improving armor, and gunpower took another dramatic leap in the 16in gun which the US introduced in 1916. As World War I ended in 1918 the British fleet was still the world's largest but the US fleet had newer, more powerful ships. Japan began a program to catch up with the US, and Britain began designing ships that could outclass both . The new designs were all monsters of over 40,000 tons, capable of over 30kt, thickly armored , and armed with 16in or even 18in guns . The United States called a halt to this folly by convening the Washington Naval Conference of 1922 , which permitted the three leading powers to each complete or build two new 16in gun ships in return for scrapping a far larger tonnage of older ones. A ten year holiday on new construction was agreed to and replacements of older vessels could only be built after they were twenty years old , later extended to twenty-five. Parity was at the status quo, giving these ratios: US 5, Great Britain 5, Japan 3, and France and Italy each 1.75. The Washington Conference held firm for its ten year term. In 1931 it was extended.for five years . There was hope that it would continue and that a further reduction could be negotiated to reduce gun calibre to 14in . The British committed themselves to the 14in gun when they began the new King George V class, before the conference was reconvened. The naval agreements fell apart under the rise of fascism. In 1934 Japan gave two years' notice that she would not renew the treaty. In 1935 Germany renounced the terms of the Versailles Treaty that had limited her to a coast defense navy of ships no larger than 10,000 tons , and at once began to build battleships of 26,000 and later 41,000 tons. Italy was building two of 41 ,000 tons. In 1938 at the London Naval Conference Great Britain, the United States, and France agreed to limit future construction to 45,000 tons but by then it was almost a moot point. The Japanese announced they would abide by this new limit but were secretly building two monsters of 63,000 tons armed with 18in guns. So this second arms race ended up just like the first, with everyone racing to outbuild each other until the war started in 1939 and the new tactics relegated the battleship to second place. In this perspective much can be learned from the Texas. Her story combines the genius of engineers, the folly of statesmen , the fear of nations and the bravery of men in struggle and ruin , uncertainty and hope. The Texas was built at a crossroads in history, a time that marked the end of isolationism for the United States, the end of the existing world order, and an unprecedented growth in armaments and their destructiveness. There is no more fitting symbol of an era that ended the most peaceful century Europe had known in a dozen centuries or more. The dreadnought battleship, a type of which she is the last survivor, represented an illusion of invincibility in a world of increasing vulnerability. .ti
Mr. Rybka , former skipper ofthe South Street schooner Pioneer, is director ofrestoration for the Galveston Historical Foundation '.s bark Elissa; see his reports in SH 15 and 26 (now available in a commemorative edition from GHF, PO 539, Galveston TX 77553). 15