USS Virginia (BB-13) - Inter-war Period

Inter-war Period

The cessation of hostilities meant the return of the many troops that had been engaged in fighting the enemy overseas. With additional messing and berthing facilities installed to permit her use as a troopship, Virginia departed Norfolk on 17 December. Over the ensuing months, she conducted five round-trip voyages to Brest and back. Reaching Boston on 4 July 1919, ending her last troop lift, Virginia ended her transport service, having brought 6,037 men back from France.

Virginia remained at the Boston Navy Yard, inactive, until decommissioned there on 13 August 1920. Struck from the Naval Vessel Register and placed on the sale list on 12 July 1922, the battleship—reclassified prior to her inactivation to BB-13 on 17 July 1920—was subsequently taken off the sale list and transferred to the War Department on 6 August 1923 for use as a bombing target.

Virginia and New Jersey were taken to a point 3 mi (5 km) off the Diamond Shoals lightship, off Cape Hatteras, North Carolina, and anchored there on 5 September 1923. The "attacks" made by Army Air Service Martin MB bombers began shortly before 0900. On the third attack, seven Martins flying at 3,000 ft (910 m), each dropped two 1,100 lb (500 kg) bombs on Virginia — only one of them hit. That single bomb, however, "completely demolished the ship as such." An observer later wrote: "Both masts, the bridge; all three smokestacks, and the upperworks disappeared with the explosion and there remained, after the smoke cleared away, nothing but the bare hull, decks blown off, and covered with a mass of tangled debris from stem to stern consisting of stacks, ventilators, cage masts, and bridges."

Within 30 minutes of the cataclysmic blast that wrecked the ship, her battered hulk sank beneath the waves. Her sister ship ultimately joined her shortly thereafter. Virginia's and New Jersey's end provided far-sighted naval officers with a dramatic demonstration of air power and impressed upon them the "urgent need of developing naval aviation with the fleet." As such, the service performed by the old pre-dreadnought may have been her most valuable.