page_title: United States Battleship Division Nine (World War I)
section_title: New standards
hierarchical_section_title: United States Battleship Division Nine (World War I) / New standards
caption_attribution_description: English: Firing her 12/45 main battery guns during battle practice, 26 June 1920. Photographed by A.E. Wells. U.S. Naval History and Heritage Command Photograph.
context_page_description: United States Battleship Division Nine was a division of four, later five, dreadnought battleships of the United States Navy's Atlantic Fleet that constituted the American contribution to the British Grand Fleet during World War I. Although the U.S. entered the war on 6 April 1917, hesitation among senior officers of the U.S. Navy as to the wisdom of dividing the American battle fleet prevented the immediate dispatch of any capital ships for service in the war zone. Following a direct request from the British Admiralty and a series of high level staff meetings, American opinion changed, and Battleship Division Nine joined the Grand Fleet on 7 December 1917. Within that organization, the Division served as the Sixth Battle Squadron.
  While serving with the Grand Fleet, Battleship Division Nine was forced to adapt quickly to unfamiliar British methods and standards. New signals and maneuvers were adopted relatively smoothly, while more stringent gunnery standards proved more difficult to achieve. On a personal level, relations between American and British officers and men were notably cordial.
context_section_description: From the beginning, the battleships of Division Nine faced a hard task in adapting to the new methods and practices they encountered in the Grand Fleet. Any difficulties, however, that might have arisen from this transition based on national pride or rivalry were dissipated in large part by the professional example set by Admiral Rodman himself. As he would later note of his squadron's assimilation: "I realized that the British fleet had had three years of actual warfare and knew the game from the ground floor up; that while we might know it theoretically, there would be a great deal to learn practically. There could not be two independent commands in one force if our work was to be harmonious, and the only logical course was to amalgamate our ships and serve under the command of the British commander-in-chief." This cooperative attitude trickled down through the division, and elicited the admiration and appreciation of the British.
  The first task facing the Americans was the adoption of an entirely new set of signals, radio codes, and cipher methods. Although the Americans had studied the general British code while crossing the Atlantic, it was some time before they could use it with anything like the proficiency of other ships in the Grand Fleet. To help in the transition, signalmen and radio operators from the Royal Navy were posted to the American battleships to aid their U.S. Navy counterparts. Though learning an entirely new system of signals was, as Admiral Rodman put it, "almost the same as if in reading we had substituted a new set of letters," within three days of their arrival, the ships of Battleship Division Nine were able to take part in fleet maneuvers in the North Sea with no apparent difficulty.
  Less successful at first were the efforts of the American battleships to match their British counterparts in excellence of gunnery. Having provided numerous veteran gun-crews to serve aboard armed merchantmen in the previous months, the gunnery complements of Division Nine were badly depleted and filled with inexperienced officers and recent recruits. The inevitable effect of this loss of talent became apparent when, on 17 December 1917, Battleship Division Nine conducted its first full-caliber target practice in nearby Pentland Firth.
  The results were relatively poor. Where British battleships by the end of 1917 generally managed a rate of fire per salvo of 40 seconds or less, and an average spread (that is, the distance measured between the closest and furthest shots in a salvo) of 300–500 yd (270–460 m), the four ships of the American squadron proved both slow and inaccurate. The rate of fire of Delaware (with an acceptable spread of 475 yd (434 m)) was 108 seconds, and Wyoming' and Florida's average spreads were 956 and 1,131 yd (874 and 1,034 m), respectively.
  Only the flagship New York managed to match British practice in both categories. In Admiral Beatty's words, the results were "distinctly poor and disappointing", and led him to the initial conclusion that he could not consider the American division the equivalent of a British one. The Americans worked to catch up, however, and with every target practice registered improved results. By the end of June 1918, Admiral Rodman was able to report that "the firing was exceptionally fine, most encouraging and much better than we have ever done previously".
caption: The Delaware at battle practice.
exif: {}