God Save Texas
On March 25, 1945, on the far side of the world, the storied battleship USS Texas went to General Quarters. Sailors and Marines manned their battle stations and remained there for the next seven weeks straight while fighting in the largest land-sea-air battle in history.
Eighty years later, a different battle rages over the future of this American monument and the world's last surviving Dreadnought.
The Legend
Launched in 1914, Texas sailed with a main battery of ten 14-inch guns and a secondary battery of twenty one 5-inch guns. Her gunners fired the first American shots of World War I in April 1917 while protecting merchant ships against a German U-boat.
That same year, as sailors worked to free her after running aground on an island, a passing ship shouted "Come On Texas!". The phrase became her motto. The Dreadnought moniker referred to the revolutionary new class of warships in the early twentieth century initiated by the British ship of that name. Many were scrapped after the war, but some of the Super-Dreadnoughts, like Texas, continued service long afterward.
Following the war, the battleship underwent a series of overhauls and became a testbed for the Navy. She also served as the flagship of the entire United States Fleet for four years.
USS Texas around 1919 when she received the designation BB-35 under the Navy's new classification system, U.S. Navy Photo
In 1941 the Texas bore witness to the birth of the 1st Marine Division on her decks and patrolled the Atlantic during the tense powder-keg of that year. Her duties there meant she escaped the attack at Pearl Harbor in December that targeted so many other battleships. In an ironic twist of fate, she later served as a filming location for 2001's Pearl Harbor.
Following operations in North Africa in 1942, where she hosted and launched the career of a young war correspondent named Walter Cronkite, Texas resumed patrols in the Atlantic. In 1944, the warship joined the force assembling in Britain for the invasion of France on the mainland.
Texas was chosen as the Bombardment Force flagship for Omaha Beach at Normandy, the location of the heaviest fighting. At times, the massive ship got as close as 3,000 yards to the shoreline while her guns cleared German defenses.
Later that month, while dueling with a German shore battery, a 9-inch shell pierced the bow near the wardroom but did not explode. A bomb technician defused it back in England and the crew kept it as a trophy. The shell remained on board for many decades.
The Texas' gunfight with a German shore battery off Cherbourg France, 25 June 1944, US Naval History and Heritage Command
After repairs, Texas transited to the Pacific, arriving just before the amphibious assault on Iwo Jima. Throughout the battle, the gunners of the Texas shot almost one thousand 14-inch shells while supporting the Marines ashore. Even as operations continued on the island, the battleship received orders to prepare for assaulting Okinawa.
The Battle of Okinawa would later earn the epithet "Typhoon of Steel", and Texas contributed more than her fair share to that name. The gunners of the Texas became legendary in the battle, shooting over 10,000 artillery shells and anti-aircraft rounds supporting troops on the island and defending against aerial attacks.
Kamikazes made up a large number of the air sorties launched by the Japanese defenders; a desperate action to damage the Allied fleet as the circle tightened around the home islands. That aerial threat convinced Texas' captain to keep his men at battle stations for 50 days; many of them in dark and cramped conditions.
And it worked. Hundreds of Allied ships were sunk or damaged in the weekslong battle, but not Texas. She survived untouched. The Invincible Dreadnought.
BB-35 in Nov 1944, just a few months removed from the battle at Okinawa. Untouched. National Archives photo.
The Afterlife
The Navy considered using the ship for bombing practice after the war, but a petition of Texas citizens, and subsequent legislation, intervened. As a result, she moved from Baltimore to the Texas coast and the Navy transferred the battleship to the State of Texas on April 21, 1948. This second life as a memorial, museum, and monument spared the Texas long enough to become the last remaining Dreadnought.
In true anachronistic Texas fashion, the State placed the steel giant at the site of the San Jacinto battlefield where a Texan army defeated Antonio Lopez de Santa Anna’s forces in 1836. It sat there for many decades, giving generations of Texas schoolchildren the vague impression that their ancestors once defeated a Mexican army with a battleship on that hallowed ground.
BB-35 stands guard over the battlefield where she defeated an entire Mexican army single-handed at some point in the distant past, U.S. Navy photo, DVIDS
Time and the elements did their work on the ship, accumulating a long list of repair needs. As State owned property, it appropriately took a couple of decades of study to figure out how to even study the problem and then get a contract in place to do the work.
In 2019, the state legislature set aside $35 million for repairs and directed the Texas Parks and Wildlife Department to implement a 99-year lease with a nonprofit to manage the battleship. The department ultimately signed an agreement with the Battleship Texas Foundation.
Finally, in 2022 the aging ship was towed down the Houston Ship Channel to a floating dry dock in Galveston. In 2023 the state legislature appropriated another $25 million to fund the ongoing repairs. A federal grant is also part of the funding mix. The total bill is unknown – because we didn’t ask anyone – but our assessment is that it is… a boatload.
USS Texas in drydock at Galveston, Sep. 2023, U.S. Coast Guard photo
Taxpayer money and government project overruns aside, the real question now is: What will happen to the Texas once the work is complete?
Before she even left her berth, the State and BTF indicated the ship would not return to San Jacinto Battleground State Historic Site. The location did not attract enough visitors to generate the revenue necessary to be self-sustaining without taxpayer assistance. One earlier plan called for a permanent dry berth on land to help protect from hurricanes and saltwater, but that solution did not move forward (hold that thought though).
After a call for proposals from communities up and down the coast, the foundation made plans to put the Texas in Seawolf park in Galveston. However, the cost of that option sent them back out searching. BTF announced new plans to place her somewhere in the Galveston waterfront, but local opposition threw up barriers there as well. In October 2024 the Port of Galveston voted to end a yearlong discussion with the foundation.
As 2025 dawns, the invincible Texas, last of the Dreadnoughts, is homeless. She survived two world wars, hurricanes, and decades of sweaty tourists. Can she survive modern politics and the relentless march of time? Should she?
We have a solution.
The Plan
There is a place in Texas where the concerns about hurricane protection and saltwater erosion evaporate into the air. Literally. A place where the Last Dreadnought will be appreciated and noticed. That place is West Texas.
What says "Texas" more than a battleship named Texas standing sentinel on the Texas High Plains or desert? No saltwater, no hurricanes, and no sharks. Just a Ghost Ship on the Ghost Coast.
Here's the Plan, we spent a lot of time on it:
Option 1) Float it all the way up the Brazos to its source on the North Fork of the Double Mountain Fork of the Brazos River, right into the heart of the Llano Estacado. For the most dramatic effect, we recommend placement on the edge of the Caprock Escarpment. Of course, it will require a few portages, but it shouldn't be too hard. If that sounds unrealistic, steamboats once traversed much of the lower Brazos. Also, there was that time Werner Herzog had people pull a 320 ton steamship up a mountain for a movie. Here's a sketch of this option:
A small army of volunteers hauls the Texas overland around one of the many dams on the Brazos River. Definitely volunteers and not forced labor. Just like the pyramids...
Option 2) If the first option proves unfeasible, there is always the more responsible, though less impressive, method of disassembling it, transporting the pieces by rail and truck, and reassembling it on site. If this sounds impractical, we direct your attention to the London Bridge in the Arizona desert. Same concept:
Photo of the London Bridge now at Lake Havasu City, Arizona. By Ken Lund, CC BY-SA 2.0
Option 3) If the genius of our first two proposed methods goes unappreciated, we have devised a third. We call it the Airship Option. It's easier just to show this one:
Super realistic depiction of a zeppelin transporting the Texas over the Plains
Option 4) Philadelphia Experiment the battleship up to West Texas:
What we imagine the Texas would look like as she teleports to her new home on the Plains, a traveler of time and space.
Option 5) And if all else fails:
Meme courtesy of The Internet
You can support the cause by sending your friends a link to this article. You can also purchase a God Save Texas t-shirt in the Surf Shop. We guarantee the proceeds will not be used responsibly or in any useful manner.
God Bless Texas, God Save Texas, and Come On, Texas! The end. Amen.
