The USS Maine
Above: Contemporary drawing of the USS Maine,
a second class battleship. The Maine and her the USS
Texas were the first true pre-dreadnought battleships of the
US Navy. The Indiana class would provide vast improvements
in battleship design.
Above: The "final
straw". Drawing of the USS Maine blowing up in Havana
harbor. Politics at the time and "yellow journalism"
would plunge the United States and Spain into a war. Years later
it was determined that spontaneous combustion in a coal bunker
next to an ammunition magazine caused the horrific explosion.
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