USS Oregon (BB-3)
 The Oregon in Manila (around 1903)
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The USS Oregon (BB-3 / IX-22) was a unit line ship of the United States Navy and belonged to the Indiana class consisting of three units . The Oregon , which was put into service as the third and last ship of this class, was named after the US state of Oregon . She was also the third ship in the United States Navy to receive this name, and the fifth battleship ever to be commissioned by the US Navy. The grant awarded on 30 June 1890 Oregon was on 19 November 1891 the shipyard of Union Iron Works (later Bethlehem Steel ) in San Francisco ( California set) to Kiel and expired on October 26, 1893 batch . On July 15, 1896, the Oregon was commissioned under the command of Captain Henry Lycurgus Howison. The construction costs at that time amounted to about 6.5 million US dollars , which corresponds to about 150 million US dollars according to today's value.
Technical details and special features
The Oregon had a maximum length of 107.4 m and was 21.11 m wide. The draft averaged around 7.1 m, but with a full coal load it could reach 8.23 m. The problem in this regard was that the Oregon had a relatively low freeboard of only around 3.2 m, which meant that when fully loaded with coal and at high speed, waves often hit the forecastle . In addition, this circumstance significantly restricted the use of the front heavy artillery tower when the waves were high. Since this made the seaworthiness and thus partly also the combat strength appear questionable, the Oregon was initially called Armored Coast Line Battle Ship during the ship's christening . Another peculiarity of the ship was that the heavy guns were not exactly balanced when they were installed. As a result, when the four heavy gun barrels of the main artillery were aligned to one side, the ship plunged deeper into the water on this side, which in turn required a higher angle of attack of the barrels in order to be able to maintain the actually planned angle of fire. This problem was later by the cultivation of counterweights on the rear sides of the towers and by the attachment of bilge keels fixed halfway.
Machine system
The Oregon was powered by six coal-fired Scotch shell boilers , four double-ended and two single-ended boilers (which normally only acted as auxiliary boilers and accounted for about 11 percent of the total output), as well as two vertically installed three-cylinder triple expansion engines that controlled two propeller shafts. It was originally planned that the engine system would deliver 9,000 PSi and thus enable the ship to reach a top speed of 15 knots . In the first speed tests in May 1896, the ship reached a maximum engine power of 13,500 PSi, but then a top speed of 16.79 kn (approx. 31 km / h), which on the one hand made the Oregon a relatively fast liner and on the other hand the shipyard, Union Iron Works, raised a $ 175,000 bonus for over-planning. Usually there was a coal supply of about 400 tons on board, but a maximum of 1,400 tons could be stored.
Armament
The main artillery consisted of four 330 mm Mark 1 L / 35 cannons in two hydraulically operated double turrets Mark 2. The turrets weighed around 440 tons each; One tower each stood in front of and one aft of the main superstructure. These were the heaviest guns ever installed on American warships. The cannons were able, within a 513 kilograms heavy grenade m to use up over a distance of up to 11,000. The rate of fire was around one shot per minute. Normally the ammunition supply was 240 rounds, so 60 shells were available for each gun.
In addition, there was a very strong semi-heavy artillery on board, which consisted of eight 203 mm Mark 3 L / 35 cannons. These guns were housed in four twin towers, with two towers each on one side of the ship. The forward pair of towers were on either side of the forward funnel, just beyond the navigating bridge ; the eighth pair lay halfway between the rear tower of the heavy artillery and the rear chimney. With one broadside , four 203 mm gun barrels could be brought to bear. The ammunition allocation was 75 shells per gun. This very powerful semi-heavy artillery, however, was at the expense of the actual medium artillery , which consisted of only four 152 mm Mark 3 L / 40 cannons, which were housed in two individual casemates on both sides of the ship. Although the Oregon was more heavily armed than most of the other unit line ships built at the time, this was not necessarily an advantage, as the fire control of the three guns calibers turned out to be complicated. And although the United States Navy intensified its shooting training from around 1897, the shooting results of the Oregon and its sister ship USS Indiana in the sea battle off Santiago de Cuba were also very poor later ; the two ships together fired a total of 47 330 mm shells and did not score a single hit.
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The Oregon’s lighter armament consisted of twenty 57-mm Hotchkiss guns in stand -alone formation and six 37-mm Maxim Nordenfeldt automatic cannons on the mast and near the bridge. For land missions, the crew had two Gatling guns and a 76 mm field cannon, which were dismantled and stored below deck.
At the beginning of the service period, the torpedo armouring consisted of six (five?) Rigidly installed 457 mm torpedo tubes of the Whitehead type, housed in separate torpedo rooms . The torpedoes had a range of about 730 m. The warhead consisted of around 45 kilograms of gun cotton . Of these tubes, which were all above the waterline, three were removed in 1908, which is why some publications also state that the Oregon later had only two (bow and stern, 35 cm), three or four torpedo tubes.
Armor
The Oregon was considered a very well protected ship. The thickness of the side armor, which consisted of a Harvey tank , which was new at the time , was up to 457 mm. The ends of the heavy artillery towers were 381 mm thick. The armor protection of the Oregon was, measured by thickness, stronger than that of any other American, British and French ships of the line built at the time. On the one hand, this was an advantage, but the water displacement was considered too low in relation to this. The result was that the ship, in combination with the very strong armament, did not have to accept any loss of speed, but was generally considered to be rather clumsy and stability difficulties were a constant problem. For this reason, some experts see the ship as an attempt to accommodate the strongest possible armor and superior armament on the basis of a relatively small size ( "[...] attempting too much on a very limited displacement.") . ).
Working time
At the time of commissioning, the Oregon was the most important and strongest warship of the American Navy in the Pacific. During the subsequent training and maneuvering missions, however, it became apparent that the not fully balanced tubes of the main artillery and the associated general susceptibility to snaking made it necessary to add quills . The Oregon was therefore docked for two months in the winter of 1897/98. The renovation work was completed on February 16, 1898.
Just one day earlier, on February 15, 1898, the American liner USS Maine sank in the port of Havana after an explosion that has not yet been fully explained. Since then the Spanish-American relations deteriorated drastically and the outbreak of war had to be expected, the Oregon moved to San Francisco , where additional ammunition, feed water and coal were taken over. The ship should be made ready for use as soon as possible and relocated to the American east coast in order to be able to intervene in the anticipated conflicts there and in the Caribbean .
On March 17, 1898, Captain Charles Edgar Clark took command of the Oregon because Captain Howison was sick with a cold. The relocation order was followed by what later went down in American naval history as "The Journey of the Oregon ". 94 crew members who were not absolutely necessary for the trip were sent ashore. This made it possible to use part of the feed water for the boilers, which were protected from excessive salt deposits that would have been caused by the use of salty sea water. This measure paid off later, as the machinery and boilers were in very good condition after the voyage around South America, which enabled the ship to be ready for immediate use.
"The Journey of the Oregon "
On March 19, 1898, the Oregon set sail from San Francisco with 1,400 tons of coal, 500 tons of ammunition and food on board for six months and reached the port of Callao in Peru on April 4 , where coal was taken on board. The tropical weather conditions at the equator caused temperatures in the engine rooms to rise to up to 65 degrees Celsius . During the approach there had also been a fire in a coal bunker adjacent to an ammunition room (presumably due to the spontaneous combustion of coal dust ), which fortunately was discovered and brought under control after four hours. On April 7th, the liner left the port of Callao and headed for the Strait of Magellan , the western exit of which was reached on April 16th. There the Oregon got into a severe storm that put the heavy ship, which usually only had a freeboard of about three feet, in considerable danger in the narrow fairway. Captain Clark was forced to drop anchor near Tamar Island in the evening hours and wait for the storm to arrive, as the shallows and reefs in the strait could no longer be made out in the falling darkness and heavy rain showers. The next morning the weather improved and the Oregon was able to continue its voyage. On April 18, coal was again taken over in Punta Arenas (around 500 tons).
In Punta Arenas, the American gunboat USS Marietta , which delivered additional coal to the Oregon , joined the liner's voyage. Both ships continued their joint voyage on April 21. Fighting against adverse winds and stormy weather, both warships reached Rio de Janeiro on April 30th . In Rio de Janeiro, both ships stashed coal again (around 1,000 tons), but since the Spanish-American war had broken out in the meantime (on April 23, 1898) , the US ships were taken by Brazilian soldiers who were on board the coal ships, and closely monitored by warships lying in front of the harbor. On May 4th, the Oregon and the Marietta left Rio de Janeiro and, after a short stay in Bahia, reached on the 8th / 9th. May 18th, British- controlled Bridgetown in Barbados . In accordance with the neutrality obligations , however, the ships were only allowed to stay for 24 hours. Sufficient coal was added in record time to reach an American-controlled base. On the night of 18./19. May the Oregon and the Marietta weighed anchor and left the port with the lights darkened.
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On May 24, 1898, the Oregon and the gunboat accompanying her finally reached Jupiter Inlet on the east coast of Florida and anchored off Key West two days later . Overall, the Oregon , which had only about 180 tons of coal in its bunkers when it arrived, had covered 14,700 nautical miles in 66 days (54 days of which at sea) . Despite the stresses and strains of the voyage, the ship was immediately reported ready for action and the engines were in very good condition. The average speed, measured on the days at sea, was around 11.5 kn during the voyage (in one case a speed of 15.8 kn could be maintained over a period of ten hours), whereby it must be taken into account that the Storm periods along the east coast of South America and the passage through the Strait of Magellan have rarely allowed a speed higher than about 6 to 7 knots. No other ship of the line in the world has ever mastered a similar march performance.
Spanish-American War
Immediately after her arrival, the Oregon was detached in the direction of Santiago de Cuba , where she arrived on May 31. Together with her sister ship Indiana , two other ships of the line and the armored cruisers USS Brooklyn and USS New York , the ship participated in the blockade of Admiral Pascual Cervera's Spanish 1st Squadron , which is made up of the armored cruisers Infanta Maria Teresa , Vizcaya , Cristóbal Colón and Almirante Oquendo and two torpedo boats existed. Rear Admiral William Thomas Sampson was in command of the US squadron . Up until the beginning of July, however, there were only sporadic exchanges of fire between the two squadrons.
The naval battle of Santiago de Cuba
On the morning of July 3, 1898, the Spanish fleet broke out of the port. In the course of the battle, which lasted more than four hours, all Spanish ships were sunk or had to land on the bank, badly damaged. The Oregon , standing about two nautical miles southeast of the port exit at the beginning of the battle , was the only American liner who was able to immediately pursue the fleeing Spanish ships because she was the only ship to have built up enough steam pressure. In the course of the battle, the Oregon , which temporarily took over the command of the US squadron, exceeded not only the top speed of all Spanish ships, but also at times that of the armored cruiser Brooklyn, which was suffering from machine problems . The fact that the ship generally had a low freeboard and also pushed a wide bow wave in front of it at high speeds caused an officer on board the liner USS Iowa to say during the battle: “There goes Oregon, like a bulldog with a great white bone in her teeth! " . This formulation earned the Oregon its later nickname "Bulldog of the Navy" after the battle .
After several hours of pursuit, the gunners of the Oregon (over a distance of around 8,700 m), around 1 p.m., with their heavy 330 mm guns succeeded several close hits at the Cristóbal Colón , the last remaining operational ship of Admiral Cerveras Squadron to achieve. The enormous columns of water encouraged the Spanish commander in his plan to put the ship on the bank and stop the fight, which had become pointless. The Cristóbal Colón ran onto the beach about 50 nautical miles west of Santiago de Cuba, which ended the battle. On the Oregon , however, as a result of these long-range shots, which had made it necessary to raise the barrel by around ten degrees, the barrel suspensions were damaged , so that a possible continuation of the battle only with the risk of further and more serious damage to the main artillery would have been. Overall, the shooting results of the Oregon , which had received three 140mm hits, had been very poor. Of a total of 198 heavy, semi-heavy and 152 mm shells fired, probably only two 203 mm shells had hit a target directly. Overall, the hit rate of the US ships was only around 1.3 percent on average.
Service from 1898 to 1906
After the Battle of Santiago de Cuba and the end of the Spanish-American War on July 17, 1898, the Oregon relocated to New York , where it underwent a major overhaul by October 1898. After a new commander came on board with Captain Albert Smith Barker on August 6, 1898, the ship was detached to the Philippines , since an uprising of the Philippine independence movement against US supremacy had started there. The Oregon marched back, together with the liner Iowa , the supply ship Celtic and the coal transporter Scindia , the same route around South America that it had mastered barely ten months earlier, albeit not under the same time pressure. On March 18, 1899, the Oregon arrived off Manila and took up a blockade there . During the following year the ship patrolled Manila Bay and the Gulf of Lingayen . In close cooperation with the United States Army , the ship supported the American conquest of Vigan in December 1899 .
In February 1900, the Oregon was finally withdrawn and relocated to Hong Kong in order to be used from there as part of an international intervention force against the Boxer Rebellion that broke out in the spring of 1900 . The ship ran into dense fog on an underwater rock near the Changshan Islands on June 28, 1900 and suffered considerable damage, including parts of the forecastle full of water. Only after three days could the Oregon, stuck on the rock , be brought back into motion. The makeshiftly sealed ship reached the Japanese naval base Kure with difficulty on July 17, 1900 , where the first repairs could take place. This ground contact initially ended the Oregon mission in Asia, which was ordered back to the United States in the spring of 1901.
After a five-month major overhaul at the Puget Sound Naval Shipyard in Bremerton , which also finally repaired the damage caused by the grounding, the Oregon stayed in San Francisco for a year . Relocated to Asia in late 1902, the ship operated from Shanghai from March 1903 and took on a relatively uneventful patrol and representation service there for the next three years. Among other things, various Japanese, Chinese and Filipino ports were called. In early 1906, the Oregon was relocated to the United States and there on April 27, 1906 for the purpose of various modernization intentions on the Puget Sound Naval Shipyard was initially decommissioned.
Service from 1906 to 1919
Between 1906 and 1911, the Oregon was a reserve ship in Bremerton. During this time the ship underwent several alterations and modifications. Thus, in the course of 1908, all 152 mm guns and all but eight lighter 57 mm guns were dismantled. Instead, the Oregon received twelve 76 mm guns in single mounts, some of which were set up in groups of two on the heavy artillery towers and some amidships on the upper deck. A round lattice mast with four searchlights was also installed aft. The number of torpedo tubes was initially reduced to three, from 1910 on there were no longer any torpedo tubes on board. The cost of these conversions at that time was around one million US dollars (around 23 million US dollars based on today's value).
On August 29, 1911, the Oregon was put back into service and took over security tasks in front of the American ports on the Pacific coast in the following years. Between 1913 and 1917, the old liner was transferred to the reserve several times and remained largely inactive. In late 1918, the Oregon crossed the Pacific again and briefly took part in the Allied intervention in Siberia during the Russian Civil War . Detached back to the United States in early 1919, the Oregon was finally decommissioned on June 12, 1919 in Bremerton.
Between the wars and the Second World War
As early as the beginning of the 1920s, efforts were made to preserve the old ship as a museum and to make it available to the state of Oregon as a memorial. In June 1925, the liner, which was no longer operational, was anchored as a floating museum in Portland , where it remained until the outbreak of World War II . Since the United States Navy had also introduced IDs for ships that were no longer in service and so far not classifiable in 1941 , the Oregon received the new ID IX-22 on February 17, 1941 . As part of the war effort, it was also required that the ship's material should also be used.
After the ship was removed from the naval register on November 2, 1942, it was completely disarmed by March 1943 and all machine parts were removed. The Hulk was initially taken over by the War Shipping Administration and transferred to the United States Court of Claims , which in turn made the Oregon available to the United States Navy. This towed the Hulk across the Pacific to Guam in the summer of 1944 and used it as a floating ammunition depot. The US Navy needed a secure depot on site during the Battle of Guam, and the Oregon armored walls, which are still very stable, seemed well suited for this.
After the end of the battle and even after the end of the Second World War, the Hulk remained outside Guam and gradually began to rot. On 14./15. November 1948 a strong typhoon passed over the Marianas and destroyed the anchorages of the old ship. The next day the Oregon was gone. After an extensive search, US aircraft were able to find the drifting Hulk on December 8, 1948, about 500 nautical miles east of Guam. The Oregon was towed back and stayed in Guam for eight more years.
Whereabouts
On March 15, 1956, the Hulk was sold to Massey Supply Corporation for $ 208,000 . This in turn sold it to the Japanese Iwai Sanggo Company, which dragged it to Kawasaki in the summer of 1956 and had it scrapped there until October 1956.
The Oregon's main battle mast still exists today. It was taken ashore after the ship was disarmed, escaped scrapping and is a memorial in Tom McCall Waterfront Park in Portland , Oregon. In 1976, a time capsule was inserted at the foot of the monument , which is not intended to be opened until 2076. In addition, both chimneys of the ship escaped scrapping. After standing for many years in the Portland Liberty Ship Memorial Park, a memorial to the Liberty ships built in Portland during World War II , they were dismantled in 2006 and have been in storage ever since.
Awards
The Oregon was awarded the Spanish Campaign Medal and the Philippine Campaign Medal as well as the World War I Victory Medal and the World War II Victory Medal for its engagements in the Spanish-American War, the Philippine War of Independence and in both World Wars . The ship also received the American Defense Service Medal .
Individual evidence
- ↑ Archived copy ( Memento of the original dated May 30, 2014 in the Internet Archive ) Info: The archive link was inserted automatically and has not yet been checked. Please check the original and archive link according to the instructions and then remove this notice.
- ↑ http://www.spanamwar.com/oregon.htm
- ↑ Spencer C. Tucker (ed.): The Encyclopedia of the Spanish-American and the Philippine-American Wars. A political, social and military history. 3rd edition, Santa Barbara 2009, p. 426.
- ↑ Roger Chesneau, Eugene M. Kolesnik (Ed.): Conway's All The World's Fighting Ships 1860-1905. New York 1979, p. 140.
- ↑ http://www.history.navy.mil/photos/pers-us/uspers-h/h-howisn.htm
- ↑ http://www.militarymuseum.org/Oregon2.html .
- ^ Tucker: Encyclopedia. P. 451.
- ↑ a b http://www.spanamwar.com/orevoyag.htm
- ↑ a b c d Tucker: Encyclopedia. P. 452.
- ↑ http://www.navsource.org/archives/01/03a.htm
- ↑ http://ussoregon.tripod.com/Santiago.html
- ↑ http://www.navweaps.com/Weapons/WNUS_13-35_mk1.htm
- ^ Tucker: Encyclopedia. P. 426.
literature
- Roger Chesneau, Eugene M. Kolesnik (Eds.): Conway's All The World's Fighting Ships 1860-1905. New York 1979.
- Norman Friedman: US Battleships: An Illustrated Design History . Naval Institute Press, Annapolis 1985.
- John C. Reilly, Robert L. Scheina: American Battleships 1886-1923. Predreadnought Design and Construction. Naval Institute Press, Annapolis 1980.
- Spencer C. Tucker (Ed.): The Encyclopedia of the Spanish-American and the Philippine-American Wars. A political, social and military history. 3rd edition, Santa Barbara 2009.
- Bert Webber: Battleship Oregon. Bulldog of the Navy. To Oregon Documentary. Webb Research Group Publishers, Medford 1994.