USS Iowa

[Pau Hana]

They weigh the same as a small car, but are a lot smaller than a car. When was the last time you saw a car that was 16" in diameter?

You’re a tad bit late to the party- see post 20...

Old news. Next!

 

[FlyWright]

I love your stories, Rich. I hope you keep 'em coming.

 

[rgano]

It's amazing how much pops out of my head as various posts prompt long dormant memories. Years ago I sat down with my stack of spiral-wound notebooks in which I kept bits and pieces of my naval career written down and committed them to a Word file. It took six months of on and off work and ended up as 92,000 words. I should check and see if I included some of this stuff here.

OMG, here's a funny one.

On one of the several trips north along the US Atlantic coast running home toward Norfolk, we had a US Coast Guard Law Enforcement Detachment (LEDET) aboard. These detachments, led by a USCG LT, ride US Navy ships of opportunity and act as the law when any drug smugglers or other illegal activity is discovered. US Navy personnel, being military, cannot be used to enforce the laws of the United States, but the “Coasties” can. So when a law enforcement action is contemplated and a LEDET is aboard, the US Coast Guard flag is run up the mast and voila, the ship is officially a Coast Guard cutter with the LEDET officer-in-charge and running the show.
Thinking, “What trouble could we possibly get into on a leisurely cruise from Florida to back home in Norfolk,” I let the Marine officer-in-charge (OIC) liaison with the USCG LDET, and I think at some point they roped either the Gunnery Officer or his direct junior in the chain of command, the Secondary Battery Officer (in charge of my 5”/38 guns and all small arms), into their scheme of maneuver for handling encounters with possible drug smugglers. At some point I guess I got the thumbs up that Weapons Department was well represented in the thoroughgoing support of our sister service’s efforts and protecting our coasts. Good enough for me because I knew my guys were the best!
So one calm, clear day oof the Carolinas, our lookouts spied a small “head boat” fishing off the Carolina coast, and the LEDET decided to check it out. When I remember this episode, I always think of a cartoon I once saw of a battleship with its big guns trained out toward a small vessel with the ballooned caption from the bridge saying, “Pull over!” I heard the call, “Away the LEDET,” and thought I’d wander out the the main deck to watch the unfolding events.
So here was the battleship, pulled to a stop about a quarter of a mile away from this fishing boat with a bunch of scruffy looking Carolinians with their poles over the side. All of a sudden a bunch of Marines came boiling out of the superstructure and plopped down prone on the teak deck while above me a couple of decks I heard the unmistakable “kerchunk” of the bolt of ma-deuce (.50 caliber M2 machine gun) slamming home on a belt of ammo as gunner’s mates loaded and pointed this awesome weapon at the hapless fishermen. Shortly, our heavily armed motor whaleboat, with LEDET embarked chugged off from our side headed over to board and search the fishing boat. I can only imagine what the innocent fishermen were thinking as I stood aft on the main deck watching this circus. Finally, I thought that discretion was the better part of valor in case the fishermen were the shoot back kind or more likely the captain might be staring down from the bridge, and I departed the scene for my officer safely out of sight and behind the armor belt on the second deck.

 

[rgano]

The Whiskey, as we called the Wisconsin, was the only one of the four Iowa class battleships I did not go to sea in and witness a full broadside of the big guns. As the fourth senior officer in Iowa, my stateroom was forward of the wardroom stbd side right by the door exiting onto the main deck. Every morning at sea at 0500, my gunners would lower those large clunky looking life line supports on the deck above me as part of the daily transmission checks between all turrets and gunmounts and the fire control systems. The life lines had to come down for T II to swing out on the beam, and the guys took especial delight in letting them fall from vertical to horizontal with a loud crash waking up all the officers below, including the XO.

 

[FlyWright]

Rich, you might like some of these Iowa pics from years ago before she was moved to San Pedro, CA.

https://drive.google.com/drive/folders/1TiiYckKnc1rNkcwlBx7o7g_tiTZouDeH?usp=sharing

Here are some shots from my visit to the Iowa in San Pedro in Oct 2019.

https://drive.google.com/open?id=1Fs6CbeEAdVnCzFpyWjbSn6PVdl0rP83C

Sorry for the detour...

 

[rgano]

1500 of us slaved day and night to keep her looking sharp; so it is hard to look at photos of the ship in a neglected state. I am sure the San Pedro museum folks have her in better shape.

 

[High Wire]

Back in the seventies the Wisconsin and Iowa were in mothballs at Philadelphia Navy Yard. You could drive right up to them in a small boat and knock on the hull. I was a teenager and had no clue how thick the hull was. Like concrete!

 

[rgano]

In 1968 as a Midshipman, I got to wander through the mothballed interior decks of the IOWA. Little did I know that in 1983 I would be assigned as her Weapons Department Head and in charge of bringing her weapons systems back to life while installing new missile systems. In her first year of reactivated service we won the coveted Battenberg Cup, the symbol of the best ship in the annual battle efficiency competition. Only two destroyers with modern digital fire control outshot us on the gunnery range. Most awesome crew I ever served with.

 

[FlyWright]

Didn't mean to hijack Dave's thread. I'll move these Iowa and Wisconsin posts to another existing, related thread.

Great discussion.

 

[Wayfarer]

Didn't mean to hijack Dave's thread. I'll move these Iowa and Wisconsin posts to another existing, related thread.

Great discussion.

No worries at all, sir!

Actually I got to thinking about Whisky again this afternoon. I'm curious, the ship's I work on are built waaaaaaaaaaaaaaay lighter than these battlewagons (obviously.) My current ship is quite flexy in a seaway. She bends and twists visibly. I wonder, did the Iowas flex at all at sea? it seems like with all of that armor they'd be stiff as granite.

 

[markpierce]

Based comparing ships at the Suisun Bay reserve fleet which once included BB Iowa, was surprised that the battleship profile was a small fraction of those of freighters and supply ships.

 

[Group9]

I was living in Pascagoula, MS when they brought the Iowa in to Ingalls for upgrading. I think half the town turned out to watch her being towed down the ship channel. She looked too big!

While they were refurbishing her, one of the things I used to do when I had guests on the boat, was to motor over to and around the Iowa, and show her off to them. You really appreciated the size when you were right next to her in a 25 foot boat.


In pre-9-11 days, no one cared if you pulled up right next to her in her berth at Ingalls. I had a bunch of good pictures, but Katrina took them all. I remember being told by a friend at Ingalls that removal of the asbestos, that was in a lot of places on the Iowa, took a lot longer than they had figured in their bid to do the work.

I moved away before they finished her, so I didn't get to see her leave.

 

[catalinajack]

In the late 80's or thereabouts, the Iowa and the Forrestal were berthed near to each other at the Newport (RI) navy base.

 

[FlyWright]

Based comparing ships at the Suisun Bay reserve fleet which once included BB Iowa, was surprised that the battleship profile was a small fraction of those of freighters and supply ships.

Especially the bow profile!

Hey Mark, did I just hear it's your 73rd birthday today?

If so, Happy Birthday!

 

[rgano]

No worries at all, sir!

Actually I got to thinking about Whisky again this afternoon. I'm curious, the ship's I work on are built waaaaaaaaaaaaaaay lighter than these battlewagons (obviously.) My current ship is quite flexy in a seaway. She bends and twists visibly. I wonder, did the Iowas flex at all at sea? it seems like with all of that armor they'd be stiff as granite.

Dave, all the six ships I was assigned as crew (three DDGs, one LPD, one ATF, and one BB) had expansion joints in the superstructure to prevent the flexing hull under it from splitting it open.

 

[rgano]

Based comparing ships at the Suisun Bay reserve fleet which once included BB Iowa, was surprised that the battleship profile was a small fraction of those of freighters and supply ships.

I remember looking at across San Diego Bay one day to see the New Jersey moored directly astern of the Kitty Hawk, I think. It put me in mind of a wolf crouched and ready to lunge on top of the boxy thing in front of it. A modern carrier far outweighs an IOWA.

 

[rgano]

In the late 80's or thereabouts, the Iowa and the Forrestal were berthed near to each other at the Newport (RI) navy base.

While I was aboard the Iowa we were participating in war game in which the "Forest Fire" or FID (First in Defense) as the Forrestal's crew like to call her and we were on opposing sides. We put to sea from Norfolk and FID was at sea of Mayport, FL. Each side was enjoined to play fair and not use any means like 6-hourly weather reports to locate the other.

Because airedales always cheat, we black shoes decided to make sure that a required weax report would not do use in, so we traded call signs for this particular report with a supply ship heading across the Atlantic forn Norfolk about the same time we left. After all, the weather data was the important data, not who sent it, right?

As an aside, the head man for our side was an aviator admiral and chose us as his flagship. I mean who could resist the comfort and prestige of the IOWA as a flagship for goodness sake?

So off we went in search of our query, the FID, and the unescorted carrier, which was a bit hampered by a limit on the flight hours she could expend on this exercise just happened to send her search aircraft out into the Atlantic in the direction of the supply ship while we slipped down the east coast toward her. Did I say aviators always cheat?

Through various means, we located and approached the FID, and when the sun rose behind us on the third day of the exercise, we were sitting off her beam with all turrets aimed at her. BANG YOU'RE DEAD. The admiral thought this was the funniest ting he had ever seen.

Black shoes RULE.

 

[slowgoesit]

They weigh the same as a small car, but are a lot smaller than a car. When was the last time you saw a car that was 16" in diameter?

Smart car that got caught between two semi's!

 

[rgano]

Especially the bow profile!

Hey Mark, did I just hear it's your 73rd birthday today?

If so, Happy Birthday!

During WWII there was a 40-MM anti-aircraft mount up in the bow, many, many feet forward of Turret One. Just imagine yourself in that gun crew at flank speed in a seaway during an air attack. It would be like floating along at wave top level in a helicopter with the attendant noise of a battle going on all around you.

 

[psneeld]

Just remember.....brown shoes put battleships out of business.

 

[rgano]

The Big day arrived in April 1984 in Pascagoula, and we were finally going to hold the commissioning ceremony for the Iowa with Vice President Bush attending. The morning was densely foggy. For some reason, I got up at reveille and walked aft. I was standing in the middle of the new helo dack all the way aft and could not see the ship's superstructure nor turret three, not that far away. Then I heard the unmistakable guttural growl of radial engines overhead. Looking straight up I saw a B-25 Mitchell bomber circling us as if to say, "Hey, where have you been these last 26 years?" It was truly one of the most eerie moments in my life.

 

[rgano]

Just remember.....brown shoes put battleships out of business.

Actually, they put the big gun out of business as an offensive weapon (for other than shore bombardment). The BB hulls served well as AA bulwarks to the carriers throughout the war. The Iowa herself could put 80 AA gun barrels into the air. Without that sort of protection as low level and her own planes directed in many cases by fighter director officers in the destroyers and cruisers, the carrier was pretty much toast. In reality, not a lot has changed since WWII in regard to open water warfare doctrine. The carrier performs its vital function of getting planes into the air and then everybody spends their time protecting the bird farm. Missile technology has increased the power of the small boys to where they are included in the strike packages going ashore and or against naval targets - the modern big gun I guess.

One thing that bothered me above all else while serving my three years in IOWA was the emphasis everybody in the chain of command placed on the big guns and thus my time devoted to their care and operation as opposed to the much more effective war fighting weapons (32 Tomahawks and 16 Harpoons) I had in my department. And don't even get me going on those worthless 5"/38 twin gunmounts and their broken down fire control radars. GRRRR.

I could have used a quarter of the men in the turrets to fire all the for-show firepower demos we did for heads of state and lesser lights, but no, the Navy wanted them manned as if we going to face down a Kirov class cruiser in open ocean with them firing a round a minute per gun. One hundred men per turret and another 56 men per 5"/38 gun system of which there were six.
Give me a break.

We could have decommissioned half of the four fire room and four engine rooms (one day of battleship time at sea cost four missile frigates sitting in port), pulled the two inboard props and still have gone 25 knots bristling with missiles. Instead of a 1500-man crew, we could have used well less than half that and still performed the presence missions in Central America which had been the jobs of east coast carriers prior to our arrival on the scene.

 

[psneeld]

You either made my point or history did.

Sure.... a ready made/floating hull can always be used till at some point keeping it running hurts more than its worth. What comes next? A similar bastardized hull, or one mission made?

Remember I come from the Coast Guard where we had to take many hand-me-down Navy hulls and keep them running for another 20 or 30 years.

 

[Northern Spy]

Brown shoes, black shoes... Meh.

Most of us wore some kind of shoes on the sub... I had red high top Converse. And sometimes I wore jungle combat boots.


Loved seeing the BBs in Pearl Harbor back in the 80s. Amazing ships.

 

[markpierce]

In the early 1960s, our neighbor was a naval captain in charge of the nearby Naval Weapons Deport. During WWII he was assigned to the USS Enterprise as an AAA gunnery officer, second in charge of the AAA weapons. He considered the battleships assigned for aircraft carrier defense to have been a misallocation of resources.

 

[rgano]

You either made my point or history did.

Sure.... a ready made/floating hull can always be used till at some point keeping it running hurts more than its worth. What comes next? A similar bastardized hull, or one mission made?

Remember I come from the Coast Guard where we had to take many hand-me-down Navy hulls and keep them running for another 20 or 30 years.

As I said, BB hulls were ready made for more than one activity. Could have been used as arsenal ships with LOT less cost in men and fuel. In a sense, the modern Navy (like the USCG) inherited the WWII BB hulls for free when they were recommissioned. In my professional opinion, very poor choices were made in what was done during the reactivations, but I did a damned fine job with what I was given. Didn't have to agree, just had to do the job. I am not enamored for the BB hulls; I am enamored of saving us all money AND doing a fine job on the Russians at the same time.

 

[markpierce]

The BBs were well armored, unlike modern ships. An advantage now ignored.

 

[psneeld]

The BBs were well armored, unlike modern ships. An advantage now ignored.

Armor may still be important for certain threats but is not really viable for most modern weapons.


I would guess speed being key to keep up with the carriers.....

 

[rgano]

BBs were armored to defend against their own main armament. That sounds a bit odd at first, but the idea was that all countries developed battleships in a steady evolution of roughly equivalent classes of BBs and that they were expected to fight against similarly armed ships when the big battle erupted. See the Battle of Jutland as the archetypal example. This armoring and the consequent enormous power plants to push them through the water plus the big guns were significant national investments; so the lesser supporting vessels like cruisers and destroyers were built not to deflect major caliber ammo, but to scout ahead to spot the enemy and to deliver torpedo attacks as ordered by the battle line commander. They had to be lightly constructed.

Fast forward to today where our surface battle fleet is composed of just two kinds of vessels, carriers and destroyer-like guided missile armed escorts. These escorts are the descendents of the light support ships called torpedo boat destroyers first developed around 1900, and like their predecessors are not and cannot be heavily armored. They are, like historical destroyers, heavily ARMED though. Our newest class of Burke destroyers do have more armor using kevlar and such materials to provide enhanced splinter protection, far more protection that the early guided missile destroyers I server in which had ZERO protection for us.

Carriers do have some armor protection I think mostly below the hangar deck to protect the propulsion systems.