Published: May, 2009
Last month marked the 20th anniversary of a gun turret explosion in which 47 sailors on the U.S.S. Iowa lost their lives. One of the worst peacetime accidents in U.S. naval history, the event was commemorated with memorial services held by Historic Ships Memorial at Pacific Square, the non-profit organization working since 1996 to preserve the battleship and the group named by the Navy the save the ship.
The U.S.S. Iowa, which is three football fields long and weighs 50,000 tons, was built in 1943 at a cost of $120 million. The ship is the namesake of the world’s best known collection of battleships built by the United States—the Navy’s illustrious Iowa class. The ship carried President Franklin Roosevelt to the Tehran Conference to meet with Winston Churchill, Joseph Stalin and Chiang Kai-Shek. Originally selected to serve as the platform for the surrender ceremony marking the end of World War II, U.S.S. Iowa was present in Tokyo Bay and transmitted to the world the news that peace had been achieved. The ship departed from San Francisco Bay to serve in the Korean Conflict in 1951, and served through the Cold War. In 1990, the ship was last decommissioned and, in 2001, was towed 5,700 miles from Rhode Island to her present location at the Suisun Bay Reserve Fleet in Benicia, about ten miles from her proposed future home.
U.S.S. Iowa is expected to attract nearly 400,000 visitors annually, and a $20 million campaign has started to move her to Mare Island in Vallejo, which was the nation’s first naval base on the Pacific Ocean. The Mare Island proposal has been declared by the Navy as sole remaining viable bid to preserve the battleship. More information can be found at www.battleshipiowa.org, and donations can be sent to Historic Ships Memorial at Pacific Square, P. O. Box 361, Vallejo, CA 94590.
