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USS South Carolina (BB-26)

1910 WORLD WAR 1

History of USS South Carolina (BB-26)

The USS South Carolina (BB-26) is the capital ship of this class and is classified as a "first class dreadnought". She is the fourth South Carolina-named ship to be launched by contractor William Cramp & Sons. Her keel was laid at the Navy Yard in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania in December 1906 and commissioned on March 1, 1910 under the command of Captain Augustus F. Fechteler. Interestingly, her BB-26 designation did not follow the normal U.S. Navy protocol for USS Michigan (BB-27), the second ship in this class was laid and launched before USS South Carolina (BB-26).

Put into use. used to be. The reason why the BB-26 has numerical priority in the order is unclear - perhaps the decision was politically motivated, or just a War Department mistake. The hull and machinery of each ship cost more than six million dollars to build at the time.

The South Carolina class was the world's first equal caliber battleship with stacked turrets. She was designed before the famous Royal Navy HMS Dreadnought, but only entered service four years after Dreadnought due to slow construction. The HMS Dreadnought was launched first, thus earning its status as the ship by which all battleships were measured past, present and - for some time - future (they adopted the generic term "dreadnought" to describe their type).

The main reason for this honor is the perfect balance of weapon configuration, tonnage and maximum speed of 21 knots at the expense of armor protection.

Dreadnought was equipped with five twin-barreled 12" turrets - three on the centerline - but the two rear turrets were not stacked. This fortification allowed the use of 8 guns, although the placement of the wing turrets did not allow cross-deck firing, limiting front and rear fire from all guns. The South Carolina class has four twin-barreled 12-inch turrets along its centerline, with the turrets able to "cross" one on top of the other.

This would allow all eight guns to fire on either beam, or the eight guns' broadsides to fire to port or starboard. Her displacement was limited by congressional elections, making her smaller in tonnage than the HMS Dreadnought, with a top speed of 18.8 knots.

However, the BB-26's armament is one of the most groundbreaking designs in naval history and will prove to be the standard for all modern warships of its kind.

The U.S. Navy pioneered the design for maximum bow and stern fire, with two higher-positioned turrets, allowing lateral fire with a wide arc in certain directions. Because of this tower arrangement, the Michigan and South Carolina were the most cited ships of the time. The ship's sleek lines make it easier for her to steam at 16,000 tons, with a length of 453 feet, a beam of 80 feet, and a draft of 27 feet.

Her coal powers 12 water-tube boilers and four-cylinder, three-expansion engines, producing 17,617 IHP and requiring 869 crew members to operate each vessel. The course also introduces the cage mast, which can be raised to the horizon to make observations and signal other ships in the fleet. Dreadnought used a heavy tripod mast, which added weight and hindered some turret fire.

The steel lattice mast used by the BB-26 provided a larger target, but it was believed that the shell would pass through the structure without causing too much damage.

South Carolina left Philadelphia on March 6 for a standard sea trial cruise. The regions of choice for e-cigarettes are the Danish West Indies and Cuba. After completing the necessary power runs and cannon-firing drills, she visited Charleston, South Carolina, and gave city residents until mid-April to inspect the ship. She set sail again, from Cape Virginia to Provincetown, Massachusetts for further trials.

On June 17, the battleship visited New York City for a reception by former President Theodore Roosevelt. She then returned to Norfolk, Virginia for sea standard repairs. Upon completion, she was assigned to the Atlantic Fleet for maneuvering and naval militia training missions near Provincetown until the end of October. From early November 1910 to January 1911, she traveled to Europe with the 2nd Battleship Division.

The division visited France and Great Britain and displayed the flag. Returning to Norfolk, she re-entered the Navy Yard for necessary sea repairs, and when she returned to the division, she honed her tactics and completed maneuvers off the coast of New England. After a brief visit to New York, she sailed east with the 2nd Battleship Division on 21 June to visit Kiel, Germany, in time for the Kiel Week Boat Festival (Kiel Week Boat Festival) organized by Kaiser Wilhelm II. Seoul has since become a major naval base) of the country.

1860s and the German Shipbuilding Center). Kieler Woche brings together all types of racing boats from all over Europe and is the largest sailing event in the world.

After the game, she sailed to the United States, arriving in Provincetown, Massachusetts, to participate in combat maneuvers along the coast to the Chesapeake Bay.

From late 1911 to mid-May 1913, she operated on the east coast, crossing the newly constructed Panama Canal to Cuba. On March 31, 1913, she stopped in New York with the Special Services to dedicate a memorial to the USS Maine.

She was selected to take the "big stick" to the Gulf of Mexico and the Caribbean Islands for over a year. In January 1914, the battleship Marines landed in Port-au-Prince, Haiti, to defend American citizens during another period of political upheaval. After gathering coal in Key West, Florida in July 1914, she was ordered to land a Marine Corps in Veracruz to assist and support the American garrison in occupying the city.

In the summer, she stayed in Mexican waters to fly the flag.

When the United States entered World War I with the Allies in April 1917, the United States did not place high demands on its navy. In addition to some activity with German U-boats and some commercial raids in the Atlantic, the Royal Navy also did the heavy lifting of clearing the waters for German ships at the Battle of Jutland and the Battle of the Falklands. South Carolina operated on the East Coast until August 1918. In September 1918, she was assigned escort duty as one of the escorts of a convoy to France.

As usual, coastal escorts reached a point in the mid-Atlantic where they handed over their convoys to other escorts and sailed back to the United States. After normal repairs in Philadelphia, she provided gunnery training and served as a training ship until the armistice on November 11, 1918.

South Carolina began sailing between the United States and Brest, France, with four voyages from February to July 1919. By the end of July, she had shipped more than 4,000 World War I veterans from France back to the United States on a massive scale.

After at-sea repairs at the Norfolk Naval Shipyard, she sailed to Annapolis, Maryland, to put trainees on a Pacific cruise. She left Annapolis in June 1920, traveled through the Panama Canal to Pearl Harbor, Hawaii, and returned to the West Coast.

South Carolina sails along the West Coast with stops in Seattle, Washington, San Francisco, California, and San Diego, California. She left San Diego on August 11, sailed east across the English Channel, and returned to Annapolis to bring back her trainee, which she did on September 2. She spent seven months in the Philadelphia yard due to repairs.

In April 1921, she traveled to Puerto Rico in the West Indies for training and then set up operations in the Chesapeake Bay. Back in Annapolis, she recruited a new batch of trainees for her traditional summer cruise. She took a boat to Norway and Portugal, before heading to Guantanamo Bay in Cuba to complete the cruise.

In late August, she disembarked the trainees at Annapolis and sailed to Philadelphia, arriving the next day. South Carolina was decommissioned in Philadelphia on December 15, 1921, and remained there until her name was removed from the Navy's Register of Ships in November 1923. Under the terms of the Washington Naval Treaty, her hull was immediately sold for scrap on April 24.

1924.