USS Texas - 104 years old and still going

[Music] [Music] and with that wonderful new intro let's move on to our review of USS Texas so the Texas had one predecessor USS Texas the pre-dreadnought battleship built in 1892 and that ship served in the US Navy until 1911 it was decommissioned and then promptly followed up by the Texas we're going to be discussing today this USS Texas was to be the second of the New York class of battleships no prize is really for guessing what the name of the other New York glass battleship actually was the US Navy had begun its dreadnought program with the South Carolina class and had been gradually working its way through multiple classes constructing a pair of ships per class first the Delawares then the florida's and then that the Wyoming's although the broadside firepower of these ships had gradually increased with the south carolina's carrying eight guns the Delawares and Florida's carrying 10 and the Wyoming's carrying 12 they had all been guns of the same caliber namely 12-inch but whilst some in the US Navy might have been happy to just stick warm or 12-inch guns onto their succeding ship designs the fact of the matter was that the British Royal Navy had just launched the Orion class armed with 13.5 inch calibre guns and the German Navy was also making the shift from 11 inch to 12 inch guns the debate as to whether or not the US Navy should follow suit in upgrading gun calibre went all the way back to the Florida class however the Florida and Wyoming's had eventually been built with 12-inch guns but by the time you got to the new york class Congress had finally seen sense and a design with 14-inch guns was selected compared to its pre immediate predecessor one turret was removed in exchange for the heavier caliber guns and in one of those wonderful little quirks of fate although the New York was ordered and laid down first the New York would actually be completed several months after the Texas which leads to a little bit of confusion as this class of ship is sometimes called the Texas class on the basis of Texas being the first ship actually in service the battleship that was to become USS Texas was therefore laid down on the 17th of April 1911 and would take just over a year to complete you'll see here just how archaic some of the technology involved was you see this ramp going up the side that ramp isn't for people although people are using it because you see people can climb scaffolds and ladders and that ramp is for mules yep they're still using mules to outfit a super dreadnought battleship but then the 1910s were full of all these kind of weird anachronisms in any case regardless of the mixture of mule men and cranes used to actually build the thing the ship was launched on the 18th of May in 1912 and would enter a prolonged fitting-out period eventually commissioning on the 12th of March 1914 her armament as constructed consisted of 10 14-inch 45 caliber guns in five twin turrets in a layout similar to the British super dreadnaughts this consisted of a super firing pair forward a turret in the middle and two turrets aft also in a super firing pet pair the secondary battery would consist of no less than 21 5-inch 51 caliber guns specifically designed for anti destroyer work hence the along barrels and a total of four three pounder and two one pounder saluting guns completed the projectile weaponry for 21 inch torpedo tubes below the waterline would complete the total offensive armament of the ship it's notable at this point that the ship commissioned with precisely zero and he aircraft firepower at 27,000 tons standard load the ship was propelled by a total of fourteen boilers producing just over 28,000 shaft horsepower these in turn drove two propellers for a total speed of just fractionally over 21 knots the fuel source for the Texas at the time of launch was primarily coal with some boilers having an oil spray to enhance the thermal performance of the engines however in addition to the 12 inch belt the coal bunkers did provide some form of additional protection with it generally being considered that a foot of coal was equivalent to an extra inch of armor which was somewhat helpful as long as the ship was still relatively fully stocked with fuel however despite having a theoretical 21 knot top speed the Texas was fitted with vertical triple expansion steam engines which were the direct predecessors of turbine engines now those of you from watching other videos will remember that all Royal Navy dreadnaughts from the very beginning that were covered with turbine engines however the Texas was not and this limited its top speed as vertical triple-expansion engines had significant vibration problems at full power and were much more labor-intensive to keep going so it's 21 knot top speed could be sustained for a while but not for more than a few hours in keeping with US Navy battleships of the period the ship would complete with a cage lattice mast which would gradually acquire more fixtures and fittings over the years the ship went almost straight from commissioning into operational duty without the usual shakedown cruise this was because of a minor incident that occurred down in Mexico when Mexican troops detained an American gunboat crew if you can actually believe it at the time at Mexico in the USA was still engaged in military posturing with each other in order to emphasize just which of the two nations carried the bigger stick Texas along with other elements of the Atlantic Fleet was sent down to the Mexican coast for a show of force which included a landing a force at Veracruz to seize the Customs House in retaliation for the seizure of the American gunboat crew as might be hinted at by that particular operation the Texas was assigned to the Atlantic Fleet and would return to normal operations before the end of the year with her first operational voyage having been an active duty mission she was back in New York Navy Yard until February 1915 to undergo the usual repairs and slight changes that would normally have been done after a shakedown cruise with that work complete Texas went back to its normal duties and spent a brief period as possibly the world's most heavily armed lifeboat as the Holland America Line passenger ship random was rammed by a Norwegian flagged fruit ship just off the Nantucket Shoals as a result Texas along with South Carolina Louisiana and Michigan sailed out to rescue the passengers with a total of 230 of the poor hapless individuals being taken off and given a ride back to America in possibly slightly less comfort but definitely much better security by 1916 the fact that aircraft were a part of life was beginning to filter through to the US Navy and in recognition of this the Texas became the first battleship in the Navy to be armed with anti-aircraft guns a grand total of two three-inch anti-aircraft guns were mounted one on top of either boat crane as you can see here with that kind of fearsome almond I can bet you every pilot was shaking in their boots perhaps more useful at the time she would also receive an updated battery of directors and rangefinders to help her direct her main caliber and secondary guns to their targets in a slightly more accurate manner than previously upon her return to active duty the Texas would take part in a number of training and tactical drills including some gunnery exercises however the US Navy had this habit of conducting their gunnery drills for the Atlantic Fleet in the West Indies and for the Pacific Fleet just off the u.s. west coast and they always insisted on carrying them out in bright sunny weather with a nice calm sea so they could more accurately see and report the fall of shot and make calculations based on the performance of the various ships however I'm sure some of you can see the problem with only training your ships to fire in flat calm lovely sunny days and we'll see more of that later but it was to be another form of naval activity unrestricted submarine warfare that would dictate Texas's next actions as the ship would be found in the York River when the u.s. declared war on Imperial Germany with the declaration of war there was a sudden need to train gun crews for merchant ships as these merchant ships might need to defend themselves against small Raiders and Hugh moats which primarily was still operating on the surface the merchant vessel Mongolia would have a gun crew that was trained aboard the USS Texas and would open fire on a u-boat on the 19th of April 1917 which discouraged the u-boat from attacking the ship and would be the first American shots fired in World War one with the US Navy intending to send a squadron of battleships over to the Grand Fleet just to make sure that the Germans knew they were fully and completely outnumbered Texas was one of the ships selected since although the more modern Avada class were in service these ships were oil burners and the British had a slight shortage of oil fuel needing to reserve that which they heard to propel ships like the queen elizabeth-class Texas being a coal burner happily matched up with the British fuel supply situation where coal was one of the few things that Britain very definitely was not short of curtsy mostly of Welsh mines who of course it would be remiss of me not to mention the north of England mines as well after a quick refit and repair she was on her way back into active service ready for her next mission when she ran aground hard on Block Island after three to four days of intensive effort including tugboats and lightning the ship they finally got her back into deeper water however hull damage meant that she needed to go in for repairs again and battleship division nine would leave for the British Isles in November whilst she was still in dock whilst in it for repairs they took the opportunity to reduce the secondary battery to 18 5-inch guns since the guns at the foremost and rear most parts of the ships were basically unworkable in anything other than a flat calm and were effectively pointless by December 1917 she had completed repairs and mid January 1918 found her preparing a rather belated voyage across the Atlantic with the removal of to further 5-inch guns after exercises during the winter this reduced the secondary battery to a total of 16 guns and it was in this configuration that she departed New York at the end of January 1918 arriving in scapa flow on the 11th of February there she would join battleship division 9 which had been renamed as the 6th battle squadron over the Grand Fleet now you'll remember my comments about American gunnery exercises taking place in a flat calm when battleship division 9 had arrived at the Grand Fleet they'd rapidly discovered that as well as being at war for near enough three years at that point the Grand Fleet trained its gunnery crews whilst underway in the North Sea and the North Sea is by far and away not a very forgiving environment and virtually never calm so in terms of practical gunnery the grand fleet accuracy was orders of magnitude above the American ships however there was nothing particularly wrong with the American ships all the crews themselves and so after some training with the Grand Fleet to their accuracy likewise came to decent levels Texas arriving a little bit late was introduced to this crash course in accurate naval gunnery fairly quickly she would then undertake a variety of missions with the grand fleet mostly consisting a convoy escort duty although punctuated by the occasional 4a to reinforce existing British squadrons that were on blockade duty when German heavy units threatened to sail the closest she'd come to actual action would be in the latter half of April 1918 when the entire high seas fleet sortied out to threaten a convoy and the grand fleet sorted in response they very nearly came to blows as the forward scouting units of the Grand Fleet caught sight of the Germans who are rapidly on their way back to port having gotten word that the British and Americans were out in force but the range was just too great to bring the Germans into action and Texas would return with the rest of the Grand Fleet to Scapa Flow with that battle just being averted after that bit of excitement things were actually relatively quiet to the point that Texas joined in a series of war games and exercises with the other squadrons of the Grand Fleet and shortly after the formal conclusion of hostilities the Texas would form part of the massive welcoming committee that was organized to greet the German high seas fleet as they came in to surrender to British Anchorage's Texas's last duties in this operational theater would be along with other US battleships escorting President Wilson to the Paris Peace Conference before heading back to the United States where they would have a rather nice naval parade in celebration of their successful mission following a brief overhaul of the Texas would be back in service in early 1919 with the Atlantic Fleet and would become the first American battleship to launch an aircraft when a British made sup with camel was catapulted off of the top of one of its turrets this along with an experiment involving spotting the fall of shells and reporting back to their mother ships by aircraft led to the widespread deployment of aircraft across the u.s. battleship fleet as it was estimated that there could be anything up to a 200% increase in naval accuracy using aircraft as spotters rather than people aboard ship but by the middle of the year her duty with the Atlantic fleet would be temporarily over and she was assigned to the newly formed Pacific Fleet and given a shiny new whole number designated BB 35 as the US Navy had now decided to adopt this code system to identify its various ships hulls as a 14-inch armed battleship the Texas would survive the cuts to the Navy made by the Washington Naval Treaty and would turn up in European waters in the mid-1920s on a training cruise wrapping this up with sinking the incomplete Colorado class USS Washington in compliance with the disarmament clauses of the said treaty by this point her lattice masts had acquired so many extra bits and pieces that they were quite wobbly and so she entered the Norfolk Navy Yard in 1925 for a major modernization this would see both of the cage moths taken out and replaced with tripod masts her coal-fired boilers would also be removed and replaced by six brand new oil fired boilers and her fire control equipment would also be upgraded her pair of anti-aircraft guns would also be complemented by six new arrivals for a total of eight and the torpedo tubes were removed six of the remaining 5-inch casement guns were also reallocated to new higher up main deck casements during this refit during this interwar period the short-lived Pacific Fleet was abolished along with the Atlantic Fleet to form the United States fleet of which Texas following her overhaul would become the flagship the battle force was considered to be based in the Pacific and the scouting force was considered to be based in the Atlantic and this state of affairs would last right up until America entered the war in 1941 whereupon the Atlantic Fleet and Pacific Fleet popped back into existence almost as if nothing had happened she would keep this Duty up for a couple of years until handing over flagship duties to another battleship and would then take to President Calvin Coolidge to Havana in Cuba for the pan-american conference where she would receive the salute of the guns of the Cuban defense forts as you can see here she would then alternate her duties between exercises in the Pacific and the Atlantic for the next few years by the late 1930s this game of oceanic ping-pong had subsided somewhat and she was assigned to the training detachment of the United States fleet in the Atlantic in 1937 she would receive further anti-aircraft armament with eight 1.1 inch guns in two quad mounts added and would also receive the first ship Warren radar designed and made by a commercial company for the US Navy in 1941 she would then receive one of the fourteen cxa m1 radar sets that would be the starting point for US Navy radar in World War two as World War two broke out but the US was still neutral she would spend 1939 operating in a neutrality patrol in the western Atlantic but this would rapidly morph into convoy escort duty for ships carrying lend-lease materiel to the United Kingdom in the course of these duties she was stalked unsuccessfully by the u-20 three with the u.s. declaration of war at the end of 1941 the Texas would find itself one of the oldest active battleships in the United States Navy with a combination of engine where an additional load due to refits having decreased her top speed to just under 20 knots as a result her first missions would be convoy escort and you might ask well why is she escorting convoys battleships are not known as great submarine hunters well the fact was that at the time the Kriegsmarine were still in possession of a number of ships that they could use to raid allied convoys with more conventional gunfire and so heavy escort was required for important convoys this lesson having been learned when Shawn host and Ginoza Noir had tried to raid the Atlantic previously and when they'd seen an old British 15-inch armed battleship sitting with the convoy had just gone nope let's go find an easier target during 1942 her secondary battery would be further reduced now only having the six 5-inch guns that had been put on the main deck casements and her total anti-aircraft battery being increased to a total of ten three-inch guns and 1420 millimeter aula cons as well as any surviving 1.1 inch that were floating around however also in 1942 she would see her first major actual combat operation when she would sortie to take part in Operation Torch she would take part in a number of Shore bombardment missions in support of the invasion before heading back to the United States whilst on her way back it turned out there was a young news reporter on board the American listeners to this channel will recognize the name Walter Cronkite and he was eager to publish the first uncensored reports of Operation Torch the only problem being that the USS Massachusetts also had a correspondent on board and was both faster than the Texas and much further ahead however the captain of the Texas had a cunning idea and stuck the young reporter into one of the Kingfisher float planes fortunately there was more than one seat and catapulted him and plane off the ship and the plane obviously being faster than any battleship would arrive first and therefore Cronkite's report would be the first read by the US public and this would launch his career as a war correspondent 1943 would see the ship taking part purely in convoy escort operations although she was very widely traveled in this role and she would receive further changes to her anti-aircraft battery other 1.1 inch guns would be removed entirely and 10-quart 40-millimeter Bofors for a total of 40 barrels would be installed along with more Orlick ins bringing the ship's armament up to 44 of these 20 millimeter cannons the Texas would therefore begin preparations for Operation Overlord the inversion of Normandy with an anti-aircraft battery that was amounted to almost a hundred guns that's not too bad for a relatively small older battleship is it as part of these rehearsals the kingfishers pilots were taken off the ship and combined with other scalped plane pilots from Arkansas Nevada and the cruisers August Quincy and Tuscaloosa to temporarily form the squadron of EOS 7 the RAF would then give them a crash course in fighter tactics in Spitfires and these pilots would then fly they're spotting missions during the d-day invasions using Spitfires due to the threat of German fighters since it was fairly reasonably held that a Kingfisher would stand practically no chance against a Messerschmitt but an experienced pilot flying a Spitfire would probably be able to see off any attackers and go back to their regular spotting mission due to experiences during the invasion of Italy where the German radio guided missiles and bombs the Texas also received its first piece of electronic warfare equipment a jammer designed to prevent said missiles from hitting it Texas and Arkansas would be assigned to bombard Omaha Beach along with a flotilla of cruisers and destroyers Texas would engage multiple targets in the Omaha Beach area including Pointe du Hoc and the western end the beach itself with the spotters in their Spitfires overhead she would also fire her main battery quite far inland both to disrupt enemy reinforcements from gathering and also to engage artillery batteries that were positioned further back behind the beach but there were also a number of opportunities to clear out strong points machine-gun nests snipers and other enemy fortifications that were in water act line of sight one has to wonder on the sheer bad luck of a German sniper that picked that today to operate from a position where he would be counter sniped by a 14-inch how explosive shell after nearly half a month of Shore bombardment duty her final missions involved her having to flood at the starboard torpedo blister in order to get the guns to elevate far enough to engage her last set of targets later on in the month she would join Arkansas and Nevada along with the usual cruiser and destroyer escort to go and suppress fortifications and battery surrounding the port of Cherbourg this time she would be counterbattery by German fortifications contained 240 millimeter guns in a rather spectacular engagement with battery Hamburg the ship managed to score a number of direct hits which destroyed at least one of the guns in the battery in return for which the battery scored at least two hits on the Texas one of these hits would skip off the conning tower hit a column underneath the navigation bridge and explode which would cause a number of casualties although the only fatality was the helmsman the other one hit the port bow fetching up in the stateroom of Warrant Officer ma Clarke but failed to explode which I'm sure was a nice surprise for him when he came off duty the shell was promptly disarmed and is displayed aboard the ship to this day after repairs to this damage the Texas would then head into the Mediterranean to support operation Dragoon the otherwise little-known invasion of southern France by the Allies in the latter part of 1944 after some initial Shore bombardment there wasn't that much resistance and so Texas headed back home arriving in New York in mid-september 1944 where she would undergo a further 36 day overhaul during which time the barrels of her main battery guns were replaced since they had done quite a lot of work since they were last installed with these works completed she would transition back over to the Pacific to ensure she got some shots in at the other main antagonists of world war ii imperial japan she would pop up off the coast of yo Jima to support the Marine landings there before moving on to assist in the invasion of Okinawa the enemy launched a number of kamikaze raids in response but Texas's beefed up anti-aircraft firepower was enough to keep her safe the end of the Second World War would find her in the Philippines and as with so many other u.s. Navy ships she was almost immediately enrolled in operation magic carpet to bring home troops she would complete three of these rather welcome round trips before being prepared for deactivation at the beginning of 1946 with so many u.s. battleships more modern than the Texas being prepared for deactivation including the entire surviving cadre of standard class battleships the north carolina's the south dakota's and some of the Iowas it was fairly clear to a lot of people that Texas would not be long for this world and would meet the scrapyard fairly soon as a result of the Texas state legislature decided that they were going to raise money to preserve the ship which was done by 1947 and in 1948 she began her journey to her new Anchorage her name was struck from the naval register in April 1948 and she would become the first permanent battleship a Memorial Museum in the United States having been stricken from the US Navy's records she was then promptly recommissioned as the flagship of the Texas Navy the name USS Texas would therefore be free to use by the US Navy and they would use it for a cruiser and more laterally for one of the new virginia-class attack submarines in active service unfortunately the battleship Texas Commission was not up to the task of maintaining the ship and cracks and gaps in various surfaces and plates began to form pipes to the open sea began to fail and various voids and bunkers began to flood and the wooden deck began to rot the the solution to this latter problem was to replace the wooden deck with concrete but as any engineer will tell you putting concrete on the steel is an incredibly bad idea if you want stuff to be preserved for a very long time because concrete corrodes and steel rusts and everything splits apart with further damage to the steel itself sure enough of the concrete cracked and rainwater began to get through into the met spaces underneath the main deck by the 1980s the situation had gotten so bad that the battleship Texas Commission was abolished and the ship was turned over to the Texas Parks and Wildlife Department after a massive structural survey and a five-year long campaign over 15 million dollars was collected and the ship was moved into the dry dock for complete and total overhaul which was badly needed give you some idea of how close a call this situation was when the ship was towed out of her berth towards the drydock that would refit it a major breach opened up just forward of the engine rooms and multiple pumps were needed to stop the ship from foundering in the Houston Ship Channel she slipped into the floating dry dock with only six inches to spare before the settling it would have become too much about 15% of the ship's overall whole structure was replaced and a her brand-new deck was installed along with many tons of rusted metal and other materials being sandblasted and removed from the superstructure and replaced with new material this work was eventually completed in 1990 and the ship was returned to its berth however it was clear that these kind of issues would recur over time and so in the mid 2000s a plan was put together to move the ship to a dry berth although in typical political manner it still hasn't happened this has unfortunately led to the inevitable and over the past decade a number of additional leaks have shown up with a couple of them seriously threatening at the ship's integrity to be honest the lack of care given to the Texas during her period as a museum makes me quite angry let me put you on a little bit of a diversion to discuss the career of another ship this is the SS Great Britain it was launched in the mid 19th century as the world's first iron civilian ship for all her modernity at the time the ship had a rather checkered career and by 1885 was an immobile Hulk in the Falkland Islands used variously as a warehouse quarantine ship and coal Hulk say yes this ship was out of service a gin over a generation before the Texas was even built after being left to rot for a number of decades she was then actually scuttled and sunk in 1937 at which point she was 98 years old having been basically abandoned for nearly half a century and then actually sunk for over three decades the ship was brought back to the UK in the 1970s refitted and placed in a dry berth where you can see her to this day having visited the ship myself and aware of the fact that the lower hull was so badly rusted through at the time it was recovered that you can literally stick your head through some of the holes so you can imagine that when I was recently informed that the Texas was in a bad way I went and had a look at some photos of the ship and noticed hang on a minute this thing still floating in the water right I've been to Bristol I know for a fact that a ship that's twice as old and has been neglected and/or sunk for almost as long as the Texas itself has been an active ship was able to be recovered and stuck into a dry berth so surely this would be the best thing to do for the Texas paramount at this point I hadn't been informed of the dry berthing project so I'm they're thinking well someone's a bit short on brain matter it's it's pretty obvious what you do is been done before it's been done by a ship that was surely in much worse condition what could possibly be simpler to which one of the people I was discussing it with went no no no no no it can't go in a dry berth it will collapse under its own weight to which I went no hang on a minute I'm sure the SS Great Britain had to have been in worse condition and they managed it with that a dreadnought battleship I mean it's it's got all its armor on the side to give it extra support above and beyond what an iron whole ship would have I mean surely it's got to be in a condition where it can at least keep itself supported and then my engineers mind started running through the permutations and went oh hang on for your statement to be true you'd have to have massive levels of rust in its major structural frames and the hull itself would basically have to be paper-thin which point the ship would be in danger of completely falling apart and as a historic monument I can't imagine anyone would have been dumb enough or stupid enough to actually let it get to that state I mean come on you've got to be wrong they've got to be able to dry berth it at which point I was linked to a report that said that as well as having significant flooding below the waterline several of the Texas's main structural frames had been allowed to degrade to over 90% rust at which point well yeah that's basically my reaction I mean seriously and all else aside how the hell does a an organization that's supposed to keep a ship intact is directly charged with it let it get into a worse state than a shipper that was deliberately left sunk and underwater for more than three decades and looking at the Texas Parks and Wildlife board's website they don't seem to get it I mean their current listed a set of goals are critical structural repairs and installing additional generators and pumps so the ship isn't getting any better leaving it where it is sticking more pumps on it is only going to prolong the situation just long enough probably for the structure to get into a place where the ship collapses in on itself and then you will have lost one of the oldest and arguably most important dreadnought battleships of the period I mean when the phrase periodic catastrophic flooding appears on the resume of what's going on at the moment you know something is really badly wrong so personally it's my great hope that somebody in the political system will actually pull their finger out and grant the necessary funds to actually get the ship dry berth and repaired properly but being politicians I'm not going to hold my breath on that no I don't want to end of the video on such a negative note but ultimately that is a state of the Texas as it is at the moment so in an effort to lighten the mood let's make sure that those of you who are listening who are in Texas or the Texas area well you know who your representatives are you can write to them hopefully get them to shake loose some extra funding for those of you who can make it two aren't necessarily in Texas I'd highly encourage you to go and have a tour of the ship it is the oldest surviving dreadnought battleship in the world and I'm sure it's well worth it and of course your admission fees will help fund the drive earth project and for the rest of us let's take a moment to celebrate to the fact that this is a ship that's over a hundred years old it survived well into the 21st century and hopefully with any luck it will continue to survive for many years to come that's it for this video thanks for watching if you have a comment or suggestion for a ship to review let us know in the comments below don't forget to tag your question with Q&A if you want to leave a question for the drydock

Channel: Drachinifel

Views: 1,550,501

Rating: 4.8920846 out of 5

Keywords: wows, world of warships, US Navy, USS Texas, World War 1, Grand Fleet, World War 2, Operation Torch, D-Day, Operation Dragoon, Iwo Jima, Okinawa, USS New York, Atlantic Fleet, Pacific Fleet

Id: 9eoJCs3_Q9g

Length: 36min 4sec (2164 seconds)

Published: Wed Nov 14 2018

Reddit Comments

[u/kweniston]

Well, going, going... Going steady as a 104-year old in an old people's home. Some leakage now and then but nothing that can't be fixed ;).

[u/EndTimeEchoes]

It's hard to get one's head around the notion that the dreadnought is a century-old technology

[u/Kreol1q1q]

Upvoted for best flair this side of reddit.

[u/IronVader501]

Every time I see it, I get more sad that Germany didn't buy back the Goeben when they had the chance.

[u/Dark_Magus]

Still going, but not "still going strong." At least not until that dry berth is build and she's moved into it. At that point she can be considered pretty safe.

[u/Color_Hawk]

I try and visit the Texas each year and donate what I can to keep her floating. It’s sadly a losing battle. Such a glorious battleship and a major stepping stone into what battleships would become.

BB-35 you may have been second in your class but you were the first of many accomplishments and simply the superior vessel. You tell the mighty stories of both world wars and the many battles thereafter, only your growing age could keep you from the mighty flames of battle. The home of many men’s thoughts and prayers, Even if the worst is to come, whether it be hammers and saws or a heavenly gale. I am forever changed... You will not be forgotten

[u/SteamedRamen]

Can’t wait for it to come back I the shop