The B12 (XII) Forum, home of the 'Front Porch, y'all' at College Football Fan Site, CFB51!!!

Merry Christmas!

Update on Battleship Texas.


https://youtu.be/ZSAWHsKaDaA

USS Texas (BB-35) was commissioned on 12 March 1914.

Per the Font of All Wisdom and Knowledge: "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 in anger for the first time when shooting medium-caliber guns at supposed submarines (no evidence exists that suggests these were anything more than waves). In World War II, Texas escorted war convoys across the Atlantic and later shelled the neutral French in the North African campaign 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. Texas was decommissioned in 1948, having earned a total of five battle stars for service in World War II. She is currently undergoing a $35 million dollar repair project in Galveston, Texas and then headed to a yet unknown location for future tours."

I have never been aboard Texas. I have toured USS North Carolina (BB-55), USS Alabama (BB-60), and USS Iowa (BB-61). Of those three, North Carolina is my favorite. I enjoyed all three tours.

A far cry from Texas, but related in dry-dock-ery, is USS Constitution, "Old Ironsides." She is docked at Boston. I have toured her twice, the second time while she was undergoing a major overhaul that exposed parts of the ship not normally visible on tours. That was cool, and I suspect it would be similarly cool to see Texas under repair.

I visited the Texas as a young boy.  It was huge and impressive.  I'm glad to see it getting some TLC and I hope they figure out a good plan for its long-term display.

The Brits scraped most of their famous ships also, they have a light cruiser in London.

I've been on the Constitution, the NC, the Alabama, and two carriers from WW 2, and the Arizona memorial.

I started watching some Netflix show about Japanese naval planning before WW II.  It got pretty boring, Archimedes something, so I turned it off.  But the main deal was how they wanted "show boats" in effect, the Yamato class, that would "look" impressive, far more so than the four or more carriers they could have built for the same trouble.

The main gun assembly on the Yamato weighed as much as a destroyer.  A lot is written about some hypothetical battle between a single Iowa class and the Yamato (which never would have happened).  I'd guess an early "lucky" hit would have been deterinative, the Iowa had better gunnery radar, but less range, more speed, but less heavy projectiles and less armor.

An interesting factoid is that the North Carolina class had 16" 45 caliber guns while the Iowa had 16" 50 caliber guns.

There was so much bad blood between crews of the South Dakota (nicknamed Sh--- Dick) and Washington they had to arrange separate shore leave times.  They got into some pretty serious fights.  The latter crew felt the former left them alone a G-canal (which technically is true).

I have a book on the USS Washington.

The B12 did really well in bowl games  a season or two ago, and won the "Bowl Cup" or whatever the mediots like to call it, based on winning% in the postseason.  And I didn't think it made the B12 the best conference then.

And losing all its bowl games this year won't make the B12 the worst conference, either.

It's really tempting for folks to use the bowls as a measure of relative conference strength, because there are so many intersectional games that wouldn't ever get played in the regular season.  It's tempting, but it is folly.  The bowl games are actually a terrible way to measure relative conference strength, because the goals of coaches and players and the teams' game prep are FAR different in the postseason, compared to the regular season. 

CFP games excepted, of course.