A tour inside the gigantic battleship USS Iowa, now a museum ship

@ElentirENG ES 8·02·2023 · 23:28 0

The USS Iowa battleship was the first of a series of four ships of its class built by the United States in World War II.

The visit to Spain of the USS Iowa, a large battleship of World War II
USS Texas: a World War I battleship in dry dock for repair

The USS Iowa was a huge ship, 270 meters long and nearly 33 meters wide, along with a draft of 11.6 meters. One of her most impressive features was hers nine 406 mm guns, mounted in three turrets (two forward and one aft) with three guns each. In addition to that main armament, this floating fortress had 20 127mm guns mounted in twin turrets, as well as 80 40mm anti-aircraft guns and 49 20mm anti-aircraft guns.

Laid down on June 27, 1940, USS Iowa was launched on August 27, 1942 and entered service with the US Navy on February 22, 1943. After fighting in World War II in the Pacific theater, he was withdrawn from service on March 24, 1949. However, in 1951 he was again assigned to the US Navy to fight in Korea, being withdrawn again in 1958. With the arrival of Ronald Reagan to the White House, the USS Iowa was reactivated in 1984, serving until 1990. During that time, she was equipped with BGM-109 Tomahawk and RGM-84 Harpoon missile launchers, in addition to four 20mm Phalanx CIWS anti-aircraft mounts.

After its final withdrawal from service, the USS Iowa underwent repairs due to an explosion in one of its turrets in 1989, and after that it spent ten years in Suisun Bay, near San Francisco , as part of the Reserve Fleet. Finally, in 2012 she was towed to Los Angeles, where she remains today as a museum ship . If you ever want to visit her, here you can check her official website.

BlueHardHat today released an interesting video showing this battleship from the inside out. We see specifically the interior of its tower number 3 (the one located at the stern) during a turn of it, and then we see the corridors that connected this tower with tower number two:

In another video published a few weeks ago, that same channel showed the turn of tower number 3 seen from the outside:

You can see here some screenshots of these two videos. Here we see turret number 3, the one located at the stern, pointing its 406 mm guns to the port side.

The huge shells of the 406 mm main guns of the battleship Iowa.

The interior of tower number 3. As can be seen, the ship is very well preserved.

This yellow lane was used to transport the projectiles from the ammunition depots to tower number 3. Each projectile weighed 1,225 kilograms.

The long corridor that connected tower 3 and tower 2. The frame of the watertight doors was painted on the lower part to indicate the orientation of the corridor, creating a curious optical effect.

The outer ring of tower number 2, one of those that were located in the bow of the ship.