Spending a night on the USS Wisconsin, a large World War II battleship

The Iowa-class battleships were the largest ships of their type built in the entire naval history of the United States.

A tour inside the gigantic battleship USS Iowa, now a museum ship
The battleship USS Alabama and the formidable military museum around it

Although construction of six ships of this class was begun, only four were ever completed: USS Iowa BB-61, USS New Jersey BB-62, USS Missouri BB-63, and USS Wisconsin BB-64. The fifth ship, USS Illinois BB-65, was scrapped in 1958 without ever being launched (her construction was cancelled in August 1945), while the sixth, USS Kentucky BB-66, was launched on 20 January 1950, but never entered service, being scrapped in 1959.

The four completed Iowa-class battleships are preserved as museum ships today. The USS Iowa is in Los Angeles, California. The USS New Jersey is in Camden, New Jersey. The USS Missouri is in Pearl Harbor, Hawaii. The USS Wisconsin is in Norfolk, Virginia, home of the largest naval base in the world.

The USS Wisconsin was laid down on January 25, 1941, just months before the Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor. It is a massive ship, 900 feet (270.4 meters) long, 110 feet (33 meters) wide, and displacing 45,000 tons. Its main armament is nine massive 16-inch (406 mm) guns in three triple turrets. It was launched just two years after the attack, on December 7, 1943, and entered service on April 16, 1944. It saw combat in the Pacific Theater of Operations, taking part in the Battle of Leyte Gulf, and later also fought in the Korean War.

During the Cold War, battleships were thought to have become obsolete due to the new king of the seas: the aircraft carrier. As a result, the USS Wisconsin was decommissioned from the US Navy on March 8, 1958. But that was not the end of its military history.

On October 22, 1988, the USS Wisconsin was commissioned into the US Navy, after a two-year modernization process that included the installation of Phalanx CIWS anti-aircraft rotary cannons and launchers for Tomahawk cruise missiles and Harpoon anti-ship missiles. With this new arsenal, it participated in the Gulf War in 1991, receiving its final decommissioning on September 30 of that year.

On December 7, 2000, marking its 57th anniversary, the USS Wisconsin was towed to the National Maritime Center in Norfolk, where it was recommissioned on April 16, 2001 as part of the U.S. Navy’s Hampton Roads Naval Museum. On December 14, 2009, the ship was officially transferred to the city of Norfolk and was listed on the National Register of Historic Places on March 28, 2012.

In addition to the usual visits to this museum ship, the USS Wisconsin offers an unusual experience: the possibility of spending a night inside it, as if you were one of the crew members of this great battleship when it was active. Dave Parker has shown this experience in an interesting video:

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Main image: Dave Parker.