USS Indiana was the lead ship of her class and the first battleship in the United States

Navy
comparable to foreign battleships of the time. Authorized in 1890, she was launched on 28 February
1893 and commissioned on 20 November 1895. The ship pioneered the use of an intermediate
battery. Indiana served in the Spanish–American War as part of the North Atlantic Squadron and
took part in the blockade of Santiago de Cuba and the battle of Santiago de Cuba. After the war she
became obsolete—despite several modernizations—and spent most of her time in commission as a
training ship or in the reserve fleet, with her last commission during World War I as a training ship
for gun crews. She was decommissioned for the third and final time in January 1919 and was shortly
after renamed Coast Battleship Number 1 so that the name Indiana could be reused. She was sunk in
shallow water as a target in aerial bombing tests in 1920 and her hull was sold for scrap in 1924. (Full
article...)

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