USS Nevada (BB-36)

Nevada was the first battleship in the US Navy to have triple gun turrets, a single funnel, and an oil-fired steam power plant. She was also the first US battleship with geared turbines, which also helped increase fuel economy and thus range compared to earlier direct drive turbines. Nevada was decommissioned on 29 August 1946 and sunk for naval gunfire practice on 31 July 1948.

About USS Nevada (BB-36) in brief

Nevada was the first battleship in the US Navy to have triple gun turrets, a single funnel, and an oil-fired steam power plant. She was also the first US battleship with geared turbines, which also helped increase fuel economy and thus range compared to earlier direct drive turbines. Nevada was decommissioned on 29 August 1946 and sunk for naval gunfire practice on 31 July 1948. The ship was hit by the blast from atomic bomb Able, and was left heavily damaged and radioactive. Nevada has been described as’revolutionary’ and ‘as radical as Dreadnought was in her day’ by present-day historians. In addition to all of the maximum armor on the battleship, Nevada was increased to 41% of the displacement on the previous battleship. This change became known as the ‘all or nothing’ principle, which most later navies adopted for their own battleships. Nevada served in both World Wars. In World War I, she was based in Bantry Bay, Ireland, to protect supply convoys that were sailing to and from Great Britain. She was one of the battleships trapped when the Japanese attacked Pearl Harbor, making the ship ‘the only bright spot in an otherwise dismal and depressing morning’ for the United States. In WWII, she served as a convoy escort in the Atlantic and as a fire-support ship in five amphibious assaults. At the end of World War II, the Navy decided that, due to age, Nevada would be not be retained as part of the active fleet and she was instead assigned as a target ship for the atomic experiments at Bikini Atoll in July 1946.

Nevada was the second U.S. Navy ship to be named after the 36th state, and the first of the two Nevada-class battleships to be called ‘Cheer Up Ship’ She was a leap forward in dreadnought technology; four of her new features would be included on almost every subsequent US battleships: tripleGun turrets, oil in place of coal for fuel, geared steam turbines for greater range, and the \” all or nothing\” armor principle. In 1903, the General Board felt all American battleships should have a minimum steaming radius of 6,000 nmi so that the US could enforce the Monroe Doctrine. One of the main purposes of the Great White Fleet, which sailed around the world in 1907–1908, was to prove to Japan that theUS Navy could carry any naval conflict into Japanese home waters. The tonnage of the ship was nearly three times that of the obsolete 1890 pre-dreadnought Oregon, almost twice that the 1904 battleship Connecticut, and almost 8,000 long tons greater than that of one of one of the first American dreadnoughts, Delaware—built just seven years prior to Nevada. At the time of her completion in 1916, The New York Times remarked that the new warship was ‘the greatest afloat’ because her was so much larger.

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