USS Indiana was the lead ship of her class and the first battleship in the United States Navy comparable to foreign battleships of the time. Indiana served in the Spanish–American War as part of the North Atlantic Squadron. She was decommissioned for the third and final time in January 1919 and was shortly after reclassified Coast Battleship Number 1. In 1920 she was sunk in shallow water as a target in aerial bombing tests in 1920 and her hull was sold for scrap in 1924. She is the only battleship to have been sunk by an aerial bombing test in the history of the US Navy.
About USS Indiana (BB-1) in brief
USS Indiana was the lead ship of her class and the first battleship in the United States Navy comparable to foreign battleships of the time. Indiana served in the Spanish–American War as part of the North Atlantic Squadron. She was decommissioned for the third and final time in January 1919 and was shortly after reclassified Coast Battleship Number 1 so that the name Indiana could be reused. In 1920 she was sunk in shallow water as a target in aerial bombing tests in 1920 and her hull was sold for scrap in 1924. The ship was a small battleship, though with heavy armor and ordnance. She also pioneered the use of an intermediate battery. Indiana was designed for coastal defense and as a result, her decks were not safe from high waves on the open ocean. After the war she quickly became obsolete and spent most of her time in commission as a training ship or in the reserve fleet, with her last commission during World War I as aTraining ship for gun crews. At the outbreak of the Spanish-American War in 1898, Indiana was commanded at Key West by Rear Admiral William T. Sampson. His squadron tried to intercept and destroy Admiral Cervera’s Flying Squadron, which was en route to the Caribbean from Spain.
The squadron returned to Key West three weeks later and found the harbor empty, but Indiana and the rest of the squadron bombarded it for two hours before realizing their mistake. At this time, all three ships were on all-class ships, and all three were on the Spanish side of the battle line at the time of the Battle of Santiago de Cuba. The battle of Santiago was won by the U.S. Navy’s USS Indiana, which took part in the blockade of Santiago and the subsequent Battle of San Juan. The U. S. Navy never lost a battle in the war, although the Spanish fleet was eventually defeated by the British and French. The USS Indiana was sunk by the Royal Navy in 1920 as a bombing target in Aerial bombing tests. She is the only battleship to have been sunk by an aerial bombing test in the history of the US Navy, and the only ship to have ever been sunk in World War II. The last ship to be sunk by a bombing test was the battleship USS New Jersey, which sank the German battleship Toulouse in 1918.
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