Posted on 06/22/2012 11:48:52 AM PDT by smokingfrog
The USS Iowa, one of the last battleships ever built, will open July 7 as a museum in Los Angeles Harbor. Advance tickets are on sale for tours of the ship, which served on and off from World War II to 1990.
The 900-foot battleship with 16-inch guns was towed recently from Vallejo, on San Francisco Bay, to Los Angeles. It is the last of the four Iowa-class battleships to find a permanent home after years as part of "the mothball fleet."
he Iowa will be operated by the nonprofit Pacific Battleship Center, which will begin offering tours July 7 even as the ship is being renovated. Such work may continue for years to make more of the ship available to tour groups.
The Iowa's new home will offer 41/2 acres of parking space in North America's busiest seaport, adjacent to the World Cruise Center, where cruise ships dock and flocks of tourists could tour the Iowa.
"Our focus for our museum will be on the history of the battleships, not only the Iowa being the ultimate in design, but we'll be focusing from the very beginnings" of the massive vessels, Kent told the Associated Press.
(Excerpt) Read more at ocregister.com ...
Also, very nearby is a 16” barrel from the USS Wisconsin. The barrel is located by the San Pedro Maritime Museum at the intersection of Sixth Street and Harbor Boulevard. It is on display right by the sidewalk and a couple of naval memorials. (They put metal crossbars in the barrel so that kids could not crawl in and get caught inside!)
There is also a Liberty ship you can take a tour on and you can also see the prow of the USS San Pedro (outside the museum).
I have seen that 16” gun. It is an astounding piece of metal!
“...very nearby is a 16” barrel from the USS Wisconsin.”
Depending on who was in charge of placing that thing, it might be fun to calculate the trajectory of a hypothetical shell that might be fired from it, and see if there’s any particular point of interest at what would be the target.
IMHO the most beautiful warship ever created.
I took my little 18 ft Chapparel out to see her when they towed her into LA harbor. She looks great. The volunteers did a great job, in very short order, to tidy her up.
I can post a few pictures this afternoon.
I should know how to spell the name of my boat lol. Chaparral!
Anyone seeing the photo of that broadside..here’s what always fascinated me. At “battlespeed”, a broadside of those 16” rifles actually pushed that gigantic steel monster a few feet in the opposite direction.
I asked a Fire Control Chief once as to the accuracy of those giant guns. His serious reply..
“If you are in a rubber raft 9 miles away, give them a free shot at you. Before they reload and re-fire.....learn to fly.”
I will never forget sitting out on the forcastle after work, listenin to tunes. It was the best of times. Watchin dolphins swimming two feet in front of the ship was pretty cool too.
I took one very good pic of the guns firing, but I never have figured out how to post pics here.
Is it just me or is the force of all the main guns going off pushing the ship to port?(notice wake at bow)
Chuckling, and shaking my head as I see the powerful recoil effect in the sideways wake of the vessel. I see they are shooting to port, and the ship is leaving “wake” as it is recoiling to the port.
Having the U. S. S. Iowa will be great, but I would have loved it more if it were the U. S. S. Missouri.
Actually, they are shooting to the starboard side.
They put the Missouri next to the Arizona, the two ships representing the beginning and end of WWII (Arizona was sunk in the sneak attack which began the war, the surrender that ended the war was signed on the deck of the Missouri).
Which begs the question: where are Wisconsin and New Jersey, the other two battleships? Scrapped?
Would love to see some pictures of your Chapparel. Post some pictures of the Iowa too while your at it. ;)
Yes. I knew that. I screwed it up, because I had it originally written as starboard, but somehow I changed it to port while editing it prior to posting I guess....SHEESH!
OH Well!
The libs in CA will probably convert it to a food pantry and homeless shelter.
“.....Which begs the question: where are Wisconsin and New Jersey, the other two battleships? Scrapped?”
Wisconsin is on display at Norfolk and the New Jersey is at Camden, NJ.
Wife and I toured the Missouri at Pearl Harbor two years ago. The mighty ship had just been in dry dock and sported fresh paint everywhere.
The dining area was set with the ship’s china and looked as if the officers were just minutes away from sitting down for chow.
Hey, I’m envious. That sounds like a great tour bud.
My dad boarded the Missouri during WWII within weeks after Japan surrendered on deck. He was headed for the stores location.
Rifles are not large caliber crew served weapons. Guns are.
Thanks.
Funny thing is that I grew up in a Navy home (was Army personally), worked in the harbor in Container Vessel Operations Shoreside Service Contracting for various Containership Vessel operators most of my working days (now retired), know bow from stern, port from starboard, and I still screwed it up.
San Francisco Shuns Retired USS Iowa
Sen. Dianne Feinstein, D-Calif., a former San Francisco mayor, helped secure $3 million to tow the Iowa from Rhode Island to the Bay Area in 2001 in hopes of making touristy Fisherman's Wharf its new home.But city supervisors voted 8-3 last month to oppose taking in the ship, citing local opposition to the Iraq war and the military's stance on gays, among other things.
"If I was going to commit any kind of money in recognition of war, then it should be toward peace, given what our war is in Iraq right now," Supervisor Ross Mirkarimi said.
Oh, and you may be wondering where he is now.
"Sheriff Mirkarimi Pleads Guilty to Misdemeanor":
"San Francisco Sheriff Ross Mirkarimi pleaded guilty today to a misdemeanor charge of false imprisonment in connection with an incident in which he allegedly inflicted a bruise on his wife."
Yes, he was actually elected sheriff last year. He is now suspended (and going through a process that may remove him from office) but is still enjoying some local support--to none of my surprise. Who needs the USS Iowa when you already have a peacefully progressive wifebeater for a sheriff?
They’d better berth her in a fresh water caisson or the salt water will cause problems in a few years. The USS Texas is in a brackish water area and she’s having serious corrosion problems.
I think the New Jersey is in Philiadelphia harbor.
SF loss - LA gains
First, you probably only have a picture on paper - that has to be scanned on your printer (hopefully has scan capability) and the result of the scan saved to your computer as a .jpg image (yeah, there are some 30 or more types of images - but, stick with saving it as a .jpg image - USS_IOWA-1.jpg, etc.
diverteach is right - you then have to upload that image somewhere others can then get to it. You may not have that now, and setting it up can always be a bit of a pain. For now though, I'll help with that, if you want. Email the .jpg to me (ron@anyold.com) - once you have created it - I'll put it on my 'server' so you can post here, by pointing to it.
That isn't really difficult... use code that looks like the following, which points to a picture in the directory that I would put yours in - the difference is this points to a picture already in that directory, and provides a 'named link' to it:
< a href="http://www.anyold.com/FR/Ron's_'office'.jpg" > Ron's Office </a >
The following is the result of actually typing that code into this post:
To have the picture display in the post - without a named link, you would use the following code (without the space between the less-than and greater-than brackets)- and of course with the actual picture-file name:
< center > < img src="http://www.anyold.com/FR/Ron's_'office'.jpg" > < /center>
Let me know if you would like to do this... it really isn't that hard, and I'll help - and/or you can send FReepmail if you have questions.
Back in ‘84 the plan was to have the Iowa homeported in NYC. A new pier was to be built, millions and millions spent on upgrades to the area.
Then the city politicians and protestors got involved. They raised all kinds of crap about the Iowa being in NYC because she carried, or possibly carried, nuclear weapons.
The NYC homeport idea was eventually scrapped and the Iowa was homeported in Norfolk.
I wonder how much free cash NYC lost on that deal...
A short tour of BB-62 New Jersey
http://home.comcast.net/~bzee1a/USS_NJ/USS_NJ.html
Regards
alfa6 ;>}
Funny thing, in that pic there is a Signalman, doing his thing. Our Navy no longer has Signalmen, sadly.
I wasn’t one but I did learn how to signal “U R A ****head” to signalmen on other ships when the occassion presented itself.
They were normally not amused.
Wisconsin is in Virginia and New Jersey is on the Jersey side of the Delaware near Philly.
kool!
I have a neighbor who worked on the gun barrels for these battleships back in the fifties as a young machinist apprentice. Here is what he described to me in an email about working on these 16” gun barrels:
“I worked at The Naval Gun Factory in DC during my machinist apprentice in 1955 to 1959. During my program I spent 6 months in the Big Gun Shop. Part of what we did in that shop, was we would work on the 16 inchers, and that was to remove the spent gun liner, then machine and install a new liner in the old gun barrel. There was a big vertical oven to expand the gun barrel, the old liner was chilled using the water from the river, and extracted using a hydraulic pressure. The liner had a slight negative angle machined on the outside as did the inside of the gun barrel to insure the liner did not slide out during firing. We then lowered the new liner coated with white lead into the heat expanded barrel, then filled it with cold water. Then with a hydraulic press that was attached on top of the ass’y the gun was brought back to room temp. The whole ass’y weighed 90 tons, but I forget the length.
Another one of my tasks, was to machine the new liner on an enormous lathe that had a carriage that you rode on, while machining it. I forget how many feet you traveled during an 8 hour shift. The biggest problem was keeping the oil cups full. The chips came off looking like auto front coil springs that were blue from the heat. Have a lot of great memories from my experiences at WNY. “
Imagine a lathe big enough to ride on!
I spent a couple of nights on that as a boy scout, the week after the turret blew up. It was so much fun to hang out with the sailors.
Disclaimer: Opinions posted on Free Republic are those of the individual posters and do not necessarily represent the opinion of Free Republic or its management. All materials posted herein are protected by copyright law and the exemption for fair use of copyrighted works.
