17 Dec 2008
USS California (BB 44) under construction at Mare Island Naval Shipyard. The only dreadnought-era battleship built on the West Coast.
Class: Tennessee
Laid Down: Oct. 25, 1916
Launched: Nov. 20, 1919
Commissioned: Aug. 10, 1921
Displacement: 32,300 tons (40,950 after refit)
Length: 624.5 feet
Beam: 97.3 feet
Draft: 30.3 feet
Speed: 21 knots
Complement: 57 officers, 1026 men
Armament:
12× 14-inch (356 mm) guns
14× 5-inch (127 mm) guns
4× 3-inch (76 mm) guns
2× 21 in (533 mm) torpedo tubes
Decommissioned: Feb. 14, 1947
Sold for scrap: July 10, 1959
Let’s go inside the turret of the battleship USS Massachusetts
16" Projectiles
Color photos from inside the rear turret of BB 59.
Here are some great B&W photos of a recent skateboarding event aboard the USS North Carolina (BB 55) by Justin McLeod.
Red Bull Skateboarding and SPoTlight Productions first ever Skate Contest on the USSNC Battleship
Interview: BB-67 Montana Author
Last spring I talked with W. Frederick Zimmerman about his Nimble Book on the never-built class of superbattleships.
1. What made you decide to put together a book on the BB-67 USS Montana?
I had been experimenting with new formats for micropublishing (see Publish A “Nimble” Book With Us) and I wanted to publish a book with a strong pictorial element. I have been a battleship fan since I was a kid, and I knew that the Naval Historical Center has a lot of great public domain images online. I chose MONTANA because as a long-time participant in the Usenet newsgroup sci.military.naval (my first post was in 1995) I knew that naval history fans on the Internet love battleships, superships, and hypothetical ships, and MONTANA was the biggest, baddest hypothetical U.S. supership ever designed. ;-)
Read the rest here.
December 17th, 2008 at 3:47 pm
Out of respect for the BB 59 and the BB 67, I bought a BB gun for my kid for Christmas.
December 18th, 2008 at 12:08 am
The only battleship built on the West Coast.
USS Oregon (BB-3) was constructed at Union Iron Works.San Francisco.
December 18th, 2008 at 9:03 am
Brian: Hmmm. You’re right.
I’ve always thought that California was it. Maybe it was only dreadnought-era battleship.
I’ll update the post.
Thanks.
December 18th, 2008 at 9:38 am
Also, it turns out that the USS Nebraska (BB 14) was built in Seattle. She was a pre-dreadnought.
Googling around turns up a lot of hits that claim the California was the only battleship built on the West Coast. Seems to be a common misconception.
Not that I’m making excuses. I think somewhere someone made the claim about the California being the only dreadnought built on the WC, someone didn’t know what a dreadnought was and looked it up. The definition in Webster’s was “battleship” and they wrote “only battleship built on the West Coast.”
February 4th, 2009 at 9:44 pm
[...] previous edition of Battlewagon Wednesday linked to a skateboarding event held aboard USS North Carolina (BB 55). It seems that not everyone [...]
February 4th, 2009 at 9:46 pm
UPDATE: Controversy over the skateboard event:
Battleship Skaters an Outrage
October 17th, 2009 at 2:37 am
So the Oregon BB-3, Nebraska BB-14, and California BB-44 are the only battleships built on the west coast?