USS Texas backdate kit

Not a simple/inexpensive fix

The Texas recieved a major overhaul in the mid-20s that added torpedo blisters, changing the whole hull configuration.   Your backdate kit needs a whole new hull

Changes also the suprestructure, adding & deleting items.   Tripod masts replace the cage masts.   Your backdate kit needs both and decks to fit the new hull

"Modern" WWII era armament & fire control will need to be cut away & replaced with WWI era weapons & directors including deck mounted torpedo tubes.

Your backdate sounds like jack up the keel, and replace everything above it

I suppose Texas is the oldest USN battleship floating, calling Olympia a cruiser.

Am I forgetting some?

If so, then yes a return from Trumpeters WW2 version would span a lot of changes.

Bill

Yes, the Texas is the last of the Super Dreadnoughts. She is currently being prepared to be moved to a ship yard facility for some badly needed repairs. Her fate after that is still somewhat up in the air. She will not be returned to her mooring in Houston. Most of the scuttlebutt is that she will be relocated to Galveston, but being moored along side the Lexington in Corpus Christi has also been mentioned.

Hi:

     I have a kit that does the Olympia as seen in the Battle of Manila Bay! It's put out by"Encore Models"-by Squadron? it's 1/232 Scale. That's the only kit I know you could borrow stuff from. This kit has everything but the Kitchen Sink! Now, I know she's a " Protected Cruiser from 1899, but Maybe?

    I recieved it as a  a gift, so I don't know where it came from originally, but a friend sent it to me. It has resin parts too.. It has the Wooden stand, Brass uprights for the stand( Not Plastic either!) Wood deck apliques and tons of P.E. and turned gun barrels. And in this I am not talking just Main gun barrels either! It also has the guns for the Secondary and Tertiary batteries as well.

    Check it out if you can. It has a lot of stuff that could be used on the TEXAS. I worry about her,  because Like  The Olympia the older she gets the more expensive the upkeep. I worry they will do like they did with The U-505 in Chicago and cut them apart and just save parts if at all!  

IronShipwright offers a resin & brass 1898 Texas/San Marcos in 350 scale.

NIKO offers one in 700 scale

Getting to as-launched condition is hugely complex.

For one, the ship would need the 12' of hull blisters removed.

Also, the entire 5"50 complement was casemated  in the hull, about half on the 100 deck, and the after guns on the 200 deck.

Most of the superstructure, other than the armorned conning tower, was different, too.  The Wardroom, the Goat Locker and the like were moved through the course of the refits (the Officer's wardroom spans the area once inhabited by the second pair of 5"50 casemates.  The Galley reamined on the main deck, that would be about it.

Getting a set of plans for the crane-top gun tubs for the 1 pounder QF guns will be interesting, too.

About the only thing that would be left from the Trumpy kit would be the main gun turrets and the 5" 50s, and perhaps half the boats.  The hull & superstructure would be largely scratch-built, so, you'd be buying bits off the aftermarket as is.

Last word is that Texas is in a shipyard in MS.  How the State is intending to spend the 25 million and the later 35 million earmarked for her preservation is yet to be established.  All manner of speculation abounds.  Seawolf Park in Galveston gets a lot of traction, but that would need millions in dredging to be deep enough (and there's a sunken Liberty ship in th way, too).

Down by Lexington also gets a lot of traffic, but, there's, again, not much room for another vessel of battleship size.

Especially given that everyone is pretty much agreed that she wants a dry berth rather than being in salt water anymore.

For my 2¢ I'd like them to use a location near Surfside, or, even better, right off Clear Lake, to be near NASA.  Bother would be suitably sheltered locations in the face of Gulf Tropical storms (which severely complicate the Galveston and Corpus Christi locations).

Texas rode out Ike and Harvey with little or no damage in the San Jacinto berth.  Here issues there were with the interfaces of the wleded bulges and the riveted hull, and that all the plumbing in the bulges had been (short-sightedly) ripped out in 1947.  Which makes keeping them pumped out an issue 72 years in the making.

Texas is special in many ways.  She was the very first USN ship specifically meant to be transfered into monument/museum status.  Every other 'display' ship has lessons learned from Texas.  And Texas was meant to have learned from Olympia, Oregon, and the like.

Texas is still at the San Jacinto site near Houston. She is being readied for a move to a dry dock for major repairs.

I would love to see her dry-docked permanently like HMS Victory, not like the pre-dreadnought HIJMS Mikasa in Japan, which is moored in concrete.Of course, such a mooring would have to be in Texas that could be protected from hurricane force weather.  I am just glad she is being repaired!

Bill

One of the original Texas Park's refurb plans called for the ship to be placed in a grassed-in "bowl" adjacent to the ship canal.   The area was to be prepared while she was away getting repaired.  There would be an earthen berm separating the bowl from the canal.   The berm would be breached, the ship brought in, the berm restored and the bowl pumped out. 

I can't see her in Corpus.   There is one large hull museum ship there already, the Lexington.  I don't see the   additional market draw    It would be cool to see her be brought through Aransas Pass   Sign me up!

Galveston may have a market draw.  Beach town,  visitors, cruise ship passengers.  There is the tall ship Elissa and the DE Stewart and submarine Cavalla there already.    Putting the Texas there may kill them, or at least the Stewart & Cavalla.  But it may be the better choice.  

I have advocated dredging the Trinity River all the way past Dallas to Fort Worth .  More population & visitors to support the enterprise

EdGrune

I have advocated dredging the Trinity River all the way past Dallas to Fort Worth . More population & visitors to support the enterprise

The town of Liberty would not be the same if they did

Getting past the dam at Lake Livingstone would also be an issue.

Then, it would be getting past the elebenty-thousand oxbows and sandbars.  Once on the West Fork, there are some tight turning spots that would be an issue (at least three I can think of within 5 miles of my house ).

Ok, so TPW ceded control back in October.  It had been my understanding that they were towing her away as soon as the transfer occured.  Apparently not.
Some updates:  https://battleshiptexas.org/battleship-updates/

Apparently they have decided that the only option for "saving" the blister tanks is to fill them with expanding foam.  That would not fit well with the original notion to "preserve the fabirc of history as closely as good stewardship allows."  (Which may explain why none of the people I used to know who were associated with the ship are any more.)