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WEST COAST - 19 July 1919 to 16 January 1924
27 July 1919, TEXAS, along with the rest of the battle fleet, exited the Panama Canal and entered the Pacific Ocean.
The 1919 canal crossing was her first of 16 crossings.

The 1919 west-coast arrival of the battleships was a major event with newspapers from San Diego to Seattle having front-page stories and photos.
The fleet worked its way slowly up the West Coast to Seattle.  Every stop was meet with enthusiastic crowds. 
Reaching Washington 11 September, the ship went into the Bremerton Navy Yard until 28 November.
 
In the Panama Canal
The airplane atop Turret 2 is an Hanriot HD2, the second of  of 10 different types of airplanes aboard BB35. 
The airplane was removed by the early 1920

  July 1919 - 2 January 1924 - West Coast Operations  

During this west-coast period, she operated out of San Pedro, the port for Los Angeles.  The islands off Los Angeles were frequent areas of TEXAS operations for gunnery drills.  TEXAS made numerous trips up and down the West Coast.

Bremerton Navy Yard, on the west side of Puget Sound, in Washington was the maintenance and repair facility.  During a mid July 1923 port call to Seattle, the Seattle Post-Intelligencer printed an anchorage of ship locations and names. The battleship names read like Battleship Row, Pearl Harbor, December 1941.

17 July 1920, she was designated by Navy as "BB-35" with the adoption of the alphanumeric system of hull designation.

Coming out of Bremerton at the end of November 1919, the ship made some port calls on the way back to San Pedro.  Most of 1920 sailings were out of then back to San Pedro so not enough information for a informative map.  There was another period in Bremerton (15 April - October).   


  South America 1921:  5 January to 8 March  

5 January leaving San Francisco

After a brief December 1920 period in Bremerton, TEXAS sailed for South America arriving in Valipariso, Chile, 31 January 1921. 
This was the most southern of the ship's sailings

As of 5 January 1921
 

  1921 to January 1924  


 



  2 January 1924 Departs for the East Coast  

2 January 1924 BB35 departs Los Angeles for the East Coast entering the Panama Canal on the

16th for the second of 16 canal crossings.  The next return to the west coast was 13 September 1927.


  STRUCTURAL CHANGES  
  Installed Enclosed Torpedo Defense Platform - last quarter of 1919 and the end of 1920 (structure below searchlight platform).

*** NET date based on the structure not present when ship entered Seattle in September 1919
*** NLT date is based on the structure being present in the 5 February 1921 photo in this section.  
 
       
  Removed Airplane Fly-off Platforms platforms :
August 1921 to 10 August 1922

First removed was Turret 4 when the two 3inch guns were place atop the turret. 

Removal from Turret 2 is deduction. Turret 2 platform is still present after the removal from Turret 4.  In a1922 photo of TEXAS in Seattle the platform is no longer present. Between these two dates, there were two Bremerton Navy Yard periods during which the removal could have been done, 3 January to 18 February 1922 or 7 to 10 August 1922.

Image is from the 1976 BB35 booklet by Leeward Publications.
 
       
  Installed Airplane on Stern of Main Deck Fall 1923

On the main deck at the stern, was a single UO-1, the fourth of 11 different airplanes aboard. The stern was also the 3rd of four locations from where airplanes would operate. To launch the plane, a boom on the starboard side would lower the UO-1 into the water. This aviation arrangement was installed in the fall of 1923, based on the installation drawing being dated 6 July 1923 

The ship is NEW YORK but both had the same arrangement
 
       
  Increased number of 5inch guns from 12 to 16 - June 1920

This was the fourth of six different configurations of 5 inch guns on 2nd deck and the only time a 2nd deck configuration change involved an increase in the number of guns. The next changed occurred during the 1925-1927 modernization 



 
  Increase of 3inch AA guns
from 2 to 8
- :By August 1921

All 8 guns are Mark XIIs which included replacing the Mark X atop the each crane.. Red highlighted areas are the location with all but #2 being the additions. This is the first change since the original two guns were installed atop the cranes and was retained until the 1925-1926 modernization.

(1) 2 - superstructure, 1 aft of each 5inch gun

(2) 2 - crane top, 1 on each crane

(3) 2 atop turret 3

(4) 2 atop turret 4
 

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Started 11 May 1999 Chuck Moore, FTV (1st Texas Volunteers) BB35 volunteer group