A while back I toured the decommissioned USS IOWA Battleship in San Pedro, California. This USS IOWA was the first of four ships built in the IOWA class of battleships, which was the last class of battleships ever completed by the United States Navy. And if I’m not mistaken, these four ships were last battleships ever produced anywhere on earth. So, you could say, even at 78 years old this is the most modern battleship still in existence today, along with her 3 sisters ships, USS NEW JERSEY, USS WISCONSIN, and the USS MISSOURI. All four IOWA class battle ships are now floating museums. As mentioned the IOWA is floating in San Pedro CA, the MISSOURI is floating in Pearl Harbor HI, the NEW JERSEY is floating in the Delaware river in Camden NJ, and the WISCONSIN is floating in Norfolk VA.
I am a bit of a WWII Navy history nerd and touring this ship was a major highlight for me. I won’t bore the readers with countless specs and trivia about these ships because that isn’t really the focus of this website. However, the machine shop on the USS IOWA and all of it machine equipment is probably right in line with the interests of Garage Topic readers.
When I arrived at the dock where the IOWA is moored in San Pedro, I was very excited to just walk the deck of such a famous ship, let alone get a full tour. For this WWII Navy nerd, the feeling of being within feet of the ship was amazing. It made the hair stand up on my arms and the back of my neck. They have retired US Navy veterans welcoming visitors onto the ship as you walk up the gangway…. and of course I had to ask for permission to come aboard, which the Navy veterans granted immediately.
Once onboard you are allowed to walk wherever you like. It’s considered a self guided tour. The do have yellow arrows painted on the various decks which help to make sure you don’t get turned around and keep moving in the right direction. But you’re still free to tour the “open” spaces as you wish. In fact, I’m pretty sure I somehow got started on the tour backwards so I was moving against the grain for the entire tour. Luckily for me there wasn’t much of a crowd that day so moving against the grain wasn’t much of a problem.
Just as I finished the tour, and I was standing outside on the aft main deck looking over LA Harbor, one of the IOWA museum employees approached me and asked how I liked the tour. After visiting with him for 5-10 minutes, he asked if there was something I wanted to see that was not on the self guided tour. I said yes, I wanted to see the Machine Shop…. and he said “why didn’t you say something sooner?” lol. He said “that easy, follow me!” And off we went to the machine shop…
Below is a gallery of pictures from the USS IOWA machine shop. These are the same pictures shown in my YouTube video but they are probably easier to see in gallery form than in a video slideshow. Side note: If anyone reading this would like a full resolution copy of any picture(s) shown in this gallery, just send me an email and I will send the full res picture(s) to you.
One of the coolest things That I was shown in the Machine shop was this steel workbench top that was stamped with the name’s and home addresses of the men who worked in the machine shop during WWII when the IOWA was parked in Tokyo Bay on V-J Day, August 15th 1945 when the Japanese signed the instruments of surrender on the deck of IOWA’s sister ship, USS MISSOURI. This picture is included in the gallery above but I just wanted to crop-in a little to show detail.
Another cool fact about the IOWA machine shop is…. All of these big machines were lowered into this space while the ship was being built in the late 1930’s – early 1940’s. They have never left the ship since it was born, they have seen several wars and many years of on-again/off-again long term storage. The IOWA was commissioned and de-commissioned three different times for three different wars and spent almost 70 years on the US Naval vessel register. And the amazing thing is…. all these machines still work great! The USS IOWA museum staff still use these machines on a regular basis to maintain the ship to this day.
And lastly, I know this is a controversial topic but it’s worth mentioning…. When most Navy vessels become museums, they are usually demilitarized and most have their propellers removed so they can never move under their own power ever again. However, the USS IOWA is different… Even though this ship has been technically donated from the US Navy to the “Pacific Battleship Center” which is the non-profit organization who operates the USS IOWA as a museum, the United States Congress passed a law to keep the battleships, and specifically the USS IOWA, in such condition that if ever needed again, the ship could be returned to the Navy and active duty.
Below is a copy/paste from the the USS IOWA wiki page:
On 17 March 2006, the Secretary of the Navy struck Iowa and Wisconsin from the NVR, which cleared the way for both ships to be donated for use as museum ships; but the United States Congress remained “deeply concerned” over the loss of the naval surface gunfire support that the battleships provided, and noted that “navy efforts to improve upon, much less replace, this capability have been highly problematic.” As a partial consequence, Congress passed Pub.L. 109–163 the National Defense Authorization Act 2006, requiring that the battleships be kept and maintained in a state of readiness should they ever be needed again. Congress ordered that measures be implemented to ensure that, if need be, Iowa could be returned to active duty. These measures closely mirrored the original three conditions that the National Defense Authorization Act of 1996 which laid out for the maintenance of Iowa while she was in the “mothball fleet”.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/USS_Iowa_(BB-61)
I know there is absolutely no way the US Navy would ever want to recommission an 80 year old ship to use in modern times. But for THIS battleship Nerd, just knowing that congress specifically made a law that would allow the IOWA to POSSIBLY return to active service greatly satisfies me.
I would like to thank all of the employees and volunteers of the USS IOWA museum who work hard every day to preserve this important part of US Naval history.
Thanks for stopping by Garage Topic.