Ships
- USS Nevada (BB-36) Captain from 30 December 1922 · Relieved on 7 September 1924
Captain John McClane Luby of the United States Navy commanded the battleship Nevada from 30 December 1922 until he was relieved on 7 September 1924. Nevada (BB-36) was the name ship of her class and a unit of the battle line in the years after the First World War.
She had been completed in 1916 with oil-fired boilers and an armor scheme that placed the heaviest protection over the main guns, the magazines, and the machinery spaces. Ten 14-inch guns made up the main battery, set in two three-gun turrets and two two-gun turrets. Late in the war, in 1918, she served in European waters with United States battleships attached to the British Grand Fleet, operating from Bantry Bay in Ireland. After the armistice she returned to American waters and was assigned to the Pacific.
Luby took command in that Pacific period. The Washington Naval Treaty, signed in 1922, had halted new battleship construction and left the existing ships to form the fleet. Through 1923 and 1924 Nevada trained with the Battle Fleet on the West Coast. Gunnery practices, engineering drills, formation work, and the Navy's large annual maneuvers filled the time. The tour was peacetime duty, given to the steady preparation of a capital ship and her crew.
On 7 September 1924 another officer relieved him. The Battle Fleet's long cruise to Australia and New Zealand in 1925 came after that change of command. His captaincy covered the months he had the ship, spent in keeping the battery qualified, the machinery fit, and the crew ready for sea.
Nevada went on to a major rebuilding later in the decade and to further service in the Pacific. On 7 December 1941 she lay at Pearl Harbor and got underway while Japanese aircraft attacked the fleet. Those events came many years after Luby had left the ship. His command of Nevada runs from 30 December 1922 to 7 September 1924.