Here at LSOZI, we are going to take off every Wednesday for a look at the old steam/diesel navies of the 1859-1946 time period and will profile a different ship each week. These ships have a life, a tale all of their own, which sometimes takes them to the strangest places.
- Christopher Eger
Warship Wednesday Nov 12, 2014: The Centennial State’s Dreadnought
Here we see the beautiful art deco battleship USS Colorado (BB-45), the pinnacle of pre-WWII U.S. Naval warship design as represented by maritime artist Jim Tomlinson.
Arguably the most powerful class of battleship afloat in the world at the time, Colorado was head of her class of three ships that included USS Maryland, and Warship Wednesday alumni USS West Virginia.
Colorado (BB-45) leading, Maryland (BB-46) following. The 3 sisters can be distinguished from one another (during the 20′s and early 30′s) by the forward range dial. Colorado carries hers half below the bottom of the fire control tower, the Maryland carries hers fully on the face of the fire control tower while the West Virginia (BB-48) carries hers like the Colorado but her dials are black with white numbers. Text & photo i.d. courtesy of Chris Hoehn. Photo possibly by Frank Lynch, chief photographer of the Seattle Post-Intelligencer, circa 1929, from the collection of Carrie Schmidt. Navsource . Click to bigup
Displacing nearly 35,000-tons at a full load, their rakish clipper bow set them apart from earlier US battlewagons and made them far drier, especially in rough weather. Turbo-electric transmission pushed four screws and could make 21-knots. Keeping enough oil in her bunkers for an 8000-mile round trip at half that, she was capable of crossing the Atlantic without an oiler to keep close to her.
Colorado just after commissioning. Note the rakish bow.
Up to 13.5-inches of armor (18 on turret faces) shielded her while eight powerful 16-inch guns gave her tremendous ‘throw’. In fact, these guns were among the heaviest afloat until marginally outclassed by the North Carolina-class in 1941.
The closest rival in any fleet around the world to her in 1923 was the British HMS Hood. Hood was bigger and faster (47,000-tons, 31-knots) but had thin armor and 8-15-inch guns. The Japanese Nagato-class were also slightly larger (38,000-tons), slightly faster (25-knots), and 8x 16-inch guns, but like the Hood had less armor.
As a hold back of pre-WWI thinking, she was the last class of US battleships commissioned with torpedo tubes and a four-turret main battery.
Ordered just eight months before the U.S. entered WWI, she was laid down at New York Shipbuilding Corporation in Camden New Jersey after the end of that conflict. Slow going post-war construction meant that she did not join the fleet until 30 Aug 1923.
A happy ship in the days between the two great wars of the 20th century, she made a maiden voyage to Europe to show off the big guns in every large port from England to Italy and then headed to the Pacific, where she joined the blue water navy based in California and Hawaii. During this next two decades, she performed typical peacetime missions such as NROTC cruises, gunnery exercises, fleet problems, and testing new equipment.
USS Colorado, overhead view 1932. Note the two Vought O3U Corsair float planes on her stern, which Colorado carried since just after she was commissioned. These would be replaced by Curtiss Seagulls in 1936 and in turn by Curtiss Kingfishers.
USS Colorado at 1934 New York naval review with three early float biplanes. While stationed for most of her career in the Pacific, she did reach the East Coast from time to time via the…
…Panama Canal. Click to bigup.
Early 1920s photo with Colorado without her catapult mounted on C turret and seaplanes. These were fitted in ~1928.
When the drums of war in the Pacific started beating in 1941, she was sent to Puget Sound Naval Yard for a one-year refit and upgrade. This saved her from the fate suffered by her sistership USS West Virginia, who absorbed at least 7 Japanese torpedoes on Dec. 7, 1941 while resting on Battleship Row.
With Maryland, who, suffering only two bomb hits at Pearl and likewise escaped destruction on that day of infamy, she formed the tiny reserve of battleships in the Pacific while the Navy was on the defensive. Then in 1943, she went to hard work and proved those mother big twenty-year-old guns of hers weren’t just pretty hood ornaments.
Bow view, port side of the Colorado (BB-45) 2 October 1944. She wore this camouflage scheme through most of the war.
She participated in no less than ten protracted amphibious operations with the Japanese forces between Nov 1943 and the end of the war including Tarawa, Kwajalein, Eniwetok, the Marianas, Leyte, Mindoro, Luzon and Okinawa. In all she fired over 60,000 shells in anger including 5,495 rounds of 16-inch at shore targets, totally nearly 7,000-tons of ordinance.
Colorado off Tarawa 1943
During WWII, she spent a total of 204 days in active combat, steaming an impressive 161,879 miles. In addition to this, she downed 11 Japanese aircraft while suffering over 400 casualties during the war from kamikazes and enemy fire.
Many of these losses occurred in duals with Japanese shore batteries. In the worst instance, Colorado was hit by 22 confirmed shells off Tinian July 24, 1944. However, that island was cleared out successfully in part to the ship’s sacrifice and just over a year later, a B-29 carrying the first Atomic bomb to be dropped in warfare took off from that little piece of rock to strike Hiroshima.
USS Colorado off Tinian 24-July-1944 with hull damage, the result of 22 hits from shore batteries
Okinawa Landing, U.S.S. Colorado,1945 Painting By Anthony Saunders.
Colorado holds the all-time record of 37 consecutive days of firing at an enemy and the record of 24 direct enemy air attacks in 62 days both while at Okinawa.
Colorado 1945 Okinawa.Note her seaplanes are not present, likely airborne to help correct shot.
Finishing the war in Japanese home waters, being awarded ten battlestars. She was decommissioned 7 January 1947, just shy of 23 years of hard service. Sadly, after a dozen years on Bremerton’s red lead row of mothball ships, she was stricken and sold to Todd Shipyard for disposal. The Maritime Administration recovered $611,777.77 in her value as scrap metal.
Today her memory is kept alive by the USS Colorado Association who maintain an excellent website.
Although scrapped, parts of her remain in a number of memorials across the country. A half dozen of her 5/51′s are on the decks of the USS Olympia, Dewey’s old flagship, in Philadelphia. These include the ships wheel and bell in Boulder and one of her 5-inch guns in Seattle at the Museum of History and Industry.
Also in Seattle, where she was scrapped at Todd, her beautiful teak-wood decking was re-purposed in 1959 and used to line the cafeteria at the Boeing Developmental Center, where it is still in use today helping to shelter those who build the country’s warplanes.
As a side, if you ever get to Tinian, the 6-inch shore gun that fired at the Colorado (BB-45) and the Norman Scott (DD-640) in 1944 is still there, in much rusted condition.
Specs:
Displacement: 32,600 long tons
Length: 624 ft. 3 in (190.27 m)
Beam: 97 ft. 4 in (29.67 m)
Draft: 38 ft. (12 m)
Propulsion:
Four screws
Turbo-electric transmission
28,900 shp (22 MW) forward
Speed: 21 knots (39 km/h)
Range: 8,000 nautical miles (15,000 km) at 10 knots (19 km/h) (design)
Complement: 1,080
Armament:
(1923)
8 × 16 inch 45 caliber Mark 5 gun (4 × 2)
14 × 5 inch/51 caliber guns
2 × 21 inch torpedo tubes
(1928) 8 × 5 inch/25 caliber guns added
(1942)
8 – 16″45 main battery; 8 – 5″51 secondary battery; 8 – 5″25 AA;
8 – Quad 40mm AA; 1 quad 20mm AA; 8 twin 20mm AA; 39 single 20mm AA.
Armor:
Belt: 8–13.5 in (203–343 mm)
Barbettes: 13 in (330 mm)
Turret face: 18 in (457 mm)
Turret sides: 9–10 in (229–254 mm)
Turret top: 5 in (127 mm)
Turret rear 9 in (229 mm)
Conning tower: 11.5 in (292 mm)
Decks: 3.5 in (89 mm)
Aviation: one catapult, 2 float planes
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