USS New York (BB-34)

USS New York (BB-34) was a United States Navy battleship, the lead ship of her class. Named for New York State, she was designed as the first ship to carry the /45-caliber gun.

Entering service in 1914, she was part of the U.S. Navy force which was sent to reinforce the British Grand Fleet in the North Sea near the end of World War I. During that time, she was involved in at least two incidents with German U-boats, and is believed to have been the only US ship to have sunk one in the war, during an accidental collision in October 1918. Following the war, she was sent on a series of training exercises and cruises in both the Atlantic and the Pacific, and saw several overhauls to increase her armament, aircraft handling and armor.

She entered the Neutrality Patrol at the beginning of World War II, and served as a convoy escort for ships to Iceland and Great Britain in the early phase of the war. She saw her first combat against coastal artillery during Operation Torch around Casablanca in North Africa, and later became a training ship. Late in the war, she moved to the Pacific, and provided naval gunfire support for the invasion of Iwo Jima and later the invasion of Okinawa. Returning to Pearl Harbor for repairs until the end of the war, she was classified obsolete and was chosen to take part in the Operation Crossroads nuclear weapon tests at Bikini Atoll in 1946. She survived both explosions, and the effects of radiation on the ship were studied for two years. She was eventually sunk as a target in 1948. She received three battle stars for her service.

Design and construction

New York was the first of two planned s, though construction on her began after her sister, . She was ordered in fiscal year 1911 as the first class of battleship in the United States Navy to carry the 14-inch/45-caliber gun.

She had a standard displacement of and a full-load displacement of . She was in length overall, at the waterline, and had a beam of and a draft of .

She was powered by 14 Babcock & Wilcox boilers driving two dual-acting vertical triple expansion reciprocating steam engines, with , with a maximum speed of . She had a range of at .

Armor on New York consisted of a belt from thick. Her lower casemate had between of armor, and her upper casemate had of armor. Deck armor was thick, and turret armor was on the face, on the top, 2 inches on the sides, and on the rear. Armor on her barbettes was between 10 and 12 inches. Her conning tower was protected by 12 inches of armor, with 4 inches of armor on its top.

Her armament consisted of ten 14-inch/45-caliber guns which could be elevated to 15 degrees, and arrayed in five double mounts designated, from bow to stern, 1, 2, 3, 4, and 5. The class was the last to feature a turret mounted amidships. As built, she also carried twenty-one /51-caliber guns, primarily for defense against destroyers and torpedo boats. The 5-inch guns were poor in accuracy in rough seas due to the open casemates mounted in the hull, so the 5-inch armament was reduced to 16 guns in 1918 by removal of the least useful positions near the ends of the ship. The ship was not designed with anti-aircraft (AA) defense in mind, but two /50 caliber AA guns were added in 1918. She also had four torpedo tubes, 1 each on the port side bow and stern and starboard bow and stern, for the Bliss-Leavitt Mark 3 torpedo. The torpedo rooms held 12 torpedoes total, plus 12 naval defense mines. Her crew consisted of 1,042 officers and enlisted men.

New York was laid down on 11 September 1911, in New York Navy Yard in Brooklyn. The New York class was constructed under new labor laws that limited the working hours of her construction crews. It was also stipulated that each ship cost less than $6,000,000, excluding cost of armor and armament. She was launched on 30 October 1912, and commissioned on 15 May 1914. The fifth ship to be named for New York State, she was sponsored by Elsie Calder, the daughter of New York politician William M. Calder. The fourth , an armored cruiser, was renamed Rochester, to free the name for this battleship, and was later scuttled in Subic Bay in 1941. However, the wreck site for that ship, which has become a popular recreational dive site, is still commonly referred to as USS New York.

Service history Under the command of Captain Thomas S. Rodgers, New York headed straight for Veracruz following its commissioning. She was designated flagship for Rear Admiral Frank Friday Fletcher in July 1914, commanding the fleet occupying and blockading Veracruz to prevent arms shipments from arriving there to support the government of Victoriano Huerta. The United States occupation of Veracruz ultimately ended and New York resumed her shakedown cruise along the East Coast of the United States. She also undertook several goodwill duties, and in December 1915 she held a high-profile Christmas party and dinner for several hundred orphans from New York City, at the suggestion of her crew. It later became a tradition on the ship to help the underprivileged when possible, earning it the nickname "Christmas Ship." Following this duty, she undertook a number of training exercises off the Atlantic coast.

World War I

Following the United States' entry into World War I, New York, under the command of Captain Edward L. Beach, Sr., became flagship of Battleship Division 9 (BatDiv 9), commanded by Rear Admiral Hugh Rodman. She was sent to reinforce the British Grand Fleet in the North Sea, arriving at Scapa Flow on 7 December 1917. The ships of the U.S. fleet were assigned to the 6th Battle Squadron in the Grand Fleet, the American ships joined in blockade and escort. In December 1917, New York and the other U.S. battleships took part in several gunnery exercises. New York scored the highest score of the ships for her main battery, with an accuracy of 93.3 percent. Ultimately the New York was the best performer in these exercises, the only ship rated as "excellent" while many of her sisters received mediocre performance reviews.

She did not fire any shots in anger during the war, but does get credit for sinking an enemy vessel. During one of her escort missions, the convoy she was escorting came under two different attacks by German U-boats. On the evening of 14 October 1918, as New York led a group of battleships into the Pentland Firth, she was rocked by a violent underwater collision on her starboard side, followed shortly after by another to the stern that broke off two blades on one of her propellers, reducing the ship to one engine and a speed of . It was immediately clear to the men on board that she had struck an underwater object, but the depth of the channel meant it could not have been a shipwreck. Commanders concluded that New York must have accidentally collided with a submerged U-boat. They agreed that the submarine had rammed its bow into the ship's side, then been struck moments later by the ship's propeller. In their opinion, the damage would have been fatal to the German craft. This strange—and accidental—encounter marked the only time in all of Battleship Division Nine's service with the Grand Fleet that one of its ships sank a German vessel.

Badly damaged by the loss of a propeller, the ship sailed to Rosyth under heavy escort for repairs on 15 October. At 01:00 the next morning, a U-boat launched three torpedoes at the damaged vessel, all of which passed ahead of her. Unlike in previous cases, sufficient evidence existed to suppose that this torpedo attack was not a false alarm—a number of officers and men aboard New York clearly saw the wakes of the torpedoes in the full moonlight, and a submarine was spotted in the immediate vicinity by a patrol shortly after the attack. Ironically, the battleship's wounded condition is possibly what saved her: although standard procedure was to steam at , New York could make only on her one operable propeller. Due to this, historian Jerry Jones believes that the U-boat captain misjudged the ship's speed. With no further damage, however, the battleship arrived safely at a drydock in Rosyth. As she was lifted clear of the water, a large dent commensurate with a submarine bow was found in her hull.

New York was also frequently host to foreign dignitaries, including King George V of the United Kingdom and the future Edward VIII, as well as then-prince Hirohito of the Empire of Japan. The ship was of great interest to other European powers, as it was in many cases a first chance to see an American dreadnought up close. She was on hand for the surrender of the German High Seas Fleet on 21 November 1918 in the Firth of Forth, several days after the signing of the Armistice, after which she returned to the United States briefly. She then served as an escort for , carrying President Woodrow Wilson, on his trip from the United States to Brest, France en route to the Versailles Peace Conference.

Interwar period Arriving back in the United States in 1919, she began to undertake training and patrol duties, including at one point to the Caribbean with a number of other U.S. ships. During this year, she also saw a refit in Norfolk Navy Yard where five 5-inch guns were removed and three additional 3-inch/50 caliber AA guns were added, bringing the total to five. The secondary battery was reduced to sixteen 5-inch/51 caliber guns. In late 1919, she sailed to the Pacific Ocean and joined the newly formed United States Pacific Fleet. She continued to conduct training and patrol duties in the Pacific until the mid-1930s when she was transferred again to the Atlantic, and began operating out of the North Atlantic, with the exception of several occasional trips to the West Coast of the United States.

In 1926 New York was considered obsolete compared with other battleships in service, so she steamed to Norfolk Navy Yard for a complete refit. While several other battleships in service, including and were converted to training ships or scrapped, New York and Texas were chosen to be overhauled to increase their speed, armor, armament, and propulsion systems as allowed by the Washington Naval Treaty of 1922. An additional were added to her for defense against aerial targets and submarines. The number of 3-inch AA guns was increased to 8, and six of the 5-inch guns were relocated to new casemates on the main deck. The torpedo tubes were removed at this time. Her 14 Babcock & Wilcox coal-fired boilers were replaced with six Bureau Express oil-fired boilers and the twin funnels were trunked into one, aft of the forward superstructure. Tripods were fitted in place of lattice masts, and atop the forward tripod a control tower was installed. A tower was built amidships that contained additional fire control to backup the system on the foremast. A new aircraft catapult was installed atop turret Number 3, and cranes were installed on either side of the funnel for boat and aircraft handling. Additional deck protection was added, and her beam was widened to . She was fitted with anti-torpedo bulges. However, these bulges made maneuvering harder at low speeds, she rolled badly, and her gunfire accuracy was reduced in rough seas. On 4 September 1928, she left for short-range battle drills with , and from 7 to 10 November the ships traveled to San Francisco together with . On 3 April 1929 she undertook anti-aircraft practice with Arizona, and then the two ships and Pennsylvania steamed for Cuba, where they stayed until steaming for Hampton Roads on 1 May.