USS Texas (BB-35)

About

USS Texas (BB-35) is a museum ship in Galveston, Texas, and former United States Navy New York-class battleship. She was launched on 18 May 1912 and commissioned on 12 March 1914. She is the oldest surviving dreadnought battleship.

Texas served in Mexican waters following the "Tampico Incident" but saw no action there, and made numerous sorties into the North Sea during World War I without engaging the enemy, though she did fire for the first time when shooting medium-caliber guns at supposed submarines (no evidence exists that suggests these were anything more than waves). From September 1927 to September 1931, Texas became the flagship of the United States Fleet, one of only four ships to be designated U.S. Fleet flagships from 1922 to 1941. In World War II, Texas escorted war convoys across the Atlantic and later shelled Vichy French forces in the North African Landings and German-held beaches in the Normandy Landings before being transferred to the Pacific Theater late in 1944 to provide naval gunfire support during the Battles of Iwo Jima and Okinawa. She was the only Allied battleship that took part in all four of these amphibious landings. Texas was decommissioned in 1948, having earned a total of five battle stars for service in World War II.