At lvl the Colorado is slow, depending how you planned your Crew.
Some more lvl to the engis will help.

Colorados a nice ship
I kept my AA so i could blind scouts you don't have as much range as other BB's so
thats a no brainer.
Yes on bulkhead keeps you moving.
a little belt and what you can get on for bluge and not slow down much
As many Engy as you have
and the higher your gunners are the better.
If you start 2 BOS early you can levl engy and gunners abover your ship then they
get fun

And that is a matter of personal preference, but subs are not the only torpedo threat you
face...theres DDs, TBs, and although I dont see it very often anymore, never forget a kita
can lay down torps such that you CANT dodge. Unarmored for BB rooms only, any room with
torps in it you should not go into battle with a glaring weakness.

Why go 40 knots when you can go 43 or 44? I never cared much for high armor; I'd rather
dodge the torps than take them. Once the sub is on you it's over anyway, considering the
damage they cause and the amount of time you have to survive before they're forced to surface.

Redrum come back to AZ :(

simple advice from a US player to another.... run .2 belt, .2 bulkhead and as much
bulge before you lose speed....with Colorado standard load of weapons and armor
should keep you at 40knots with dual 16" and AA along with .2belt, .2bulkhead and
around 100ish bulge...this is of course all depending upon the skill and ammount of
engineers that you have... TTFN everyone

The crew thing isnt something i can really verify, I just know that i always run 5 bulk on
all my ships and ive never taken a hit that killed more than one officer, let alone the
hits that kill 50-60 guys like some people have posted. The speed thing you can test
however...Get a friend in a dd to follow alongside you in a test room dinking away at your
dp until you lose speed, and then repeat the test with bulk...you'll notice it takes more
damage to slow you down with the bulk, and that extra bit of speed can very often make the
difference between death and limping off the line for repairs. Keep in mind 900 sd means
that you only take 10% of the damage instantaniously, so the 1k difference in dp to slow
you down equates to an additional 10k hit needed to damage your engines and render you
unable to escape before the next salvo...or something like that. It doesnt take any
additional damage to sink you, but less chance of being one shotted or single-hit crippled
means you're more likely to survive longer and earn more attack.

I agree with ninja on this one....

On most of my US ships, I've run bulkhead.....sometimes in place of having a lot of
bulge. With the easy to hit speed caps of many of the US ships, I'd rather have the
permanent speed advantage bulkhead gives me then the one-time torpedo hit
benefit.

If I can maintain my speed, I can outrun that sub, dodge DBs, dodge incoming shells,
and dodge torpedos.

Ninja im not sure 5 bulkhead makes that much of a difference :S but ive never ran tests so
i can not comment for sure.

Bulkhead has 2 fold advantages...1 is it raises the defence power of your ship, making
critical hits (the ones that kill crew) somewhat less frequesnt, but more measurable and
important is that it allows you to maintain OH speed while damaged, and that very often
makes the difference between being able to pull of the line and repair or trying to limp
away and not making it.