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The ''Florida''-class battleships of the United States Navy comprised two ships: and . Launched in 1910 and 1909 respectively and commissioned in 1911, they were slightly larger than the preceding ''Delaware''-class design but were otherwise very similar. This was the first US battleship class in which all ships received steam turbine engines. In the previous , one ship received steam turbine propulsion as an experiment while the other retained triple-expansion engines. Both ships were involved in the 1914 Second Battle of Vera Cruz, deploying their Marine contingents as part of the operation. Following the entrance of the United States into World War I in 1917, both ships were deployed to Europe. ''Florida'' was assigned to the British Grand Fleet and based in Scapa Flow; in December 1918 she escorted President Woodrow Wilson to France for the peace negotiations. ''Utah'' was assigned to convoy escort duty; she was based in Ireland and was tasked with protecting convoys as they approached the European continent. Retained under the Washington Naval Treaty of 1922, both ships were modernized significantly, with torpedo bulges and oil-fired boilers installed and other improvements made, but were demilitarized under terms of the 1930 London Naval Treaty. ''Florida'' was scrapped, ''Utah'' converted into first a radio-controlled target ship, then an anti-aircraft gunnery trainer. She served in the latter role until sunk by the Japanese during the attack on Pearl Harbor on 7 December 1941. Her hull, never raised, remains on the bottom of the harbor as a war memorial. == Design == The ''Florida''s were the third of 10 separate classes built between 1906 and 1919, a total of 22 battleships being commissioned. The new dreadnoughts of the American battle line were being designed from pre-dreadnought experience and observation of foreign designs, as no U.S. dreadnought had yet been commissioned at the time that the ''Florida''s were designed; all were either at some stage of building or in design. American capital ship design was also heavily influenced by war games conducted at the U.S. Navy's Naval War College. Captain William Sims led a reform movement that assigned warship design to the General Board. These ships were an improvement over the preceding . Their engine rooms were larger to hold four Curtis or Parsons steam turbines. Their larger beam gave them greater metacentric height, in which the ''Delaware''s were notably deficient, which improved buoyancy and reduced hull stress. The ships mounted new 5 in (127 mm) /51 caliber guns as secondary batteries in casemates that boasted increased armor protection. The class retained the large and fully enclosed conning towers that were adopted for the preceding ''Delaware''s, as a result of American studies of the Battle of Tsushima in 1905. The design reduced the vulnerability of the command staff. Overall, these ships were much better protected than their British counterparts, although they were modified extensively during the interwar period. 抄文引用元・出典: フリー百科事典『 ウィキペディア（Wikipedia）』 ■ウィキペディアで「Florida-class battleship」の詳細全文を読む スポンサード リンク
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