Where Are All 4 Iowa-Class Battleships Now

Explore the history and current status of all four Iowa-class battleships, their wartime roles, and where they are now.

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Key Takeaways

Only four of six Iowa-class battleships were completed and all played significant roles in US naval history.
The USS Missouri is a key historical symbol as the site of Japan's WWII surrender and now a memorial.
The USS Iowa had a secret mission carrying President Roosevelt and suffered the deadliest peacetime accident in US Navy surface fleet history.
The USS Wisconsin is preserved as a museum and uniquely carries the bow of the never-completed USS Kentucky.
These battleships collectively represent decades of naval warfare evolution and American military history.

What the video covers

The Iowa-class battleships were the most powerful US battleships designed in 1940, with six ordered but only four completed.
These four ships served in every major American conflict from WWII through the Gulf War in 1991.
The USS Missouri is famous for the official Japanese surrender signing in 1945 and now serves as a memorial in Pearl Harbor.
The USS Iowa carried President Roosevelt secretly across the Atlantic during WWII and survived a tragic turret explosion in 1989.
The USS Wisconsin was heavily damaged in a collision in 1956 but later served in the Gulf War and is now a museum ship in Norfolk, Virginia.
The USS Kentucky never sailed under her own power but part of her bow was carried into the Gulf War aboard the Wisconsin.
The video also covers the fate of the two Iowa-class ships never completed and the unique stories behind each battleship.
The Missouri and Arizona sit 400 yards apart in Pearl Harbor, symbolizing the start and end of the Pacific War.
The USS Iowa experienced a near friendly-fire incident involving a torpedo from its escort ship during WWII.
The video highlights the legacy, combat history, and current museum status of the Iowa-class battleships.

Chapters

How many Iowa-class battleships were completed and saw service?

Six Iowa-class battleships were ordered, but only four were completed and commissioned. These four served in major conflicts from WWII to the Gulf War.

What is the significance of the USS Missouri in naval history?

The USS Missouri is known for hosting the official Japanese surrender signing in 1945, marking the end of WWII in the Pacific. It now serves as a memorial at Pearl Harbor.

What happened during the USS Iowa's secret mission with President Roosevelt?

The USS Iowa secretly transported President Roosevelt across the Atlantic during WWII. During the voyage, an escort ship accidentally fired a live torpedo at the Iowa, which narrowly avoided disaster.

Full Transcript — Download SRT & Markdown

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In 1940, the United States Navy ordered the most powerful battleships it had ever designed. Six ships, bigger than anything that had come before, fast enough to keep pace with aircraft carriers, armed with nine 16-inch guns capable of devastating targets miles inland. They would become known as the Iowa-class. Six were ordered, only four ever made it to sea. Those four ships fought in every major American conflict from the Second World War all the way to the Gulf War in 1991.

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Together they fired shells at Japanese island positions across the Pacific, at North Korean supply lines, at Vietnamese jungle targets, and at Iraqi military positions in the Kuwaiti desert.

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One of them ended the Second World War. One was nearly sunk by its own escort ship while carrying the American president. One became the most decorated battleship in US Navy history, and almost nobody has heard of it. And one

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sailed into the Gulf War carrying the bow of a ship that never existed. [music] By the end of this video, you will know exactly where all four of them are now, and what happened to the two that never made it. [music] But to

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understand where they ended up, you first need to know what they went through to get there. Before we get into it, this channel is growing fast, and I genuinely want to say thank you to everyone watching. Where in the world

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are you from? And does anyone here have a personal connection to the Iowa-class battleships? A family member who served on one? Or maybe you visited one of the museums? Drop it in the comments. Now, one thing before we start, six

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Iowa-class battleships were ordered, and only four were ever completed and commissioned. If you already knew that, good. If that surprises you, we'll come back to the other two at the end.

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[music] Because what happened to them is worth knowing. Let's start with the one you already know, the USS Missouri.

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On September the 2nd, 1945, in Tokyo Bay, [music] a table was carried up onto the deck of the Missouri. It was slightly too small for what was about to happen on it.

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[music] A last-minute search found a larger mess table covered with a green cloth. Japanese officials in formal dress coats and military officers in uniform were brought aboard. Allied representatives lined the deck in rows. General Douglas MacArthur stood at the microphone. The

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war in the Pacific had already been decided. [music] The atomic bombs had fallen. Japan had announced its surrender weeks earlier, but surrender had to be made official. It had to be signed, and somebody had to choose the ship it would happen on. They chose the

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Missouri. MacArthur spoke briefly. The Japanese foreign minister signed first, then the military representative, [music] then the Allied commanders one by one.

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MacArthur deliberately used several pens during the signing and gave each one away as a souvenir afterward. Twenty-three minutes, and the deadliest conflict in human history [music] was formally over.

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The Missouri went on to serve in Korea and was reactivated in the 1980s, [music] fitted with Tomahawk cruise missiles alongside her original 16-inch guns.

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In January 1991, she opened fire in the Gulf War, firing Tomahawks deep into Iraq, and using her guns to support Marine forces along the Kuwaiti coast.

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She fired her guns in combat for the last time in February 1991. She was decommissioned in 1992.

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And then came the question of where she should go. She was [music] donated to a memorial association in Honolulu in 1998 with a plan to bring her to Pearl Harbor. The National Park Service, which manages [music] the USS Arizona

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Memorial, pushed back. The Arizona is a war grave. [music] Nearly 2 million people visit it every year in quiet reflection. The concern was that mooring an 887-foot battleship beside it would turn Pearl Harbor into something closer to a

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spectacle [music] than a place of remembrance. A compromise was reached. The Missouri came, but positioned well back from the memorial. Visitors on her deck would not have a direct sight line to the Arizona during ceremonies there. One thing

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though was deliberate. The Missouri's bow was pointed directly at the Arizona, not angled away, not side on, facing [music] it, watching it. A commonly given explanation is that the Missouri stands watch over the Arizona so the men inside can rest. The Arizona sank on the

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morning of December the 7th, 1941 [music] before the war had even properly begun. The Missouri arrived years later and ended everything. And now they sit in the same water, [music] 400 yards apart.

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The ship that started the war and the ship that finished it. The Missouri isn't just watching over one wreck. She is the only battleship left standing guard [music] over the beginning of a war she helped to close. That's the ship everyone

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already knows. But stay with me 'cause the next one nearly killed the American president [music] before the war was even half over.

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The USS Iowa was commissioned in February 1943. Within months she was handed a mission so secret that most of her own crew weren't told about it until it was already underway. President Franklin D.

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Roosevelt needed to cross the Atlantic. He was traveling to Tehran for a conference with Churchill and Stalin, the first time a sitting US president had crossed the ocean during wartime with active German U-boats still operating across it.

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Roosevelt had polio. He used a wheelchair. Getting him there safely and secretly fell to the Navy. A special bathtub was fitted into [music] the captain's quarters to accommodate the president. The crossing was classified.

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On November 12th, 1943, the Iowa left Hampton Roads with the president of the United States on board.

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Three days in, something happened that very nearly changed the course of the war. The escorting destroyer, USS William D.

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Porter [music] was running a routine drill when a crew member accidentally activated [music] a torpedo tube. A live torpedo, armed, running hot, launched directly at the Iowa. The torpedo was heading straight for the ship carrying the American president. The Porter broke radio

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silence to warn the Iowa. The Iowa turned hard. The torpedo detonated harmlessly in her wake. Roosevelt reportedly asked to be taken out onto the deck in his wheelchair to watch the explosion. What followed the Porter was one of the most extraordinary careers in

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naval history for all the wrong reasons. Her commanding officer was court-martialed. The crew were briefly detained. The ship became notorious throughout the fleet. Other vessels would radio warnings when she came into port asking what she'd managed to sink

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lately. The Porter was eventually sent to the Pacific. Off Okinawa in June 1945, a Japanese aircraft crashed into the water beside her.

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The explosion underneath the hull was enough to sink her. All of her crew survived. The Iowa made it to North Africa. Roosevelt [music] made it to Tehran. The story was classified for years.

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After the war, the Iowa served in Korea, [music] then was reactivated in the 1980s alongside her sisters. She survived a torpedo fire by her own escort. She survived two wars. She survived four decades of mothballs and reactivations.

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What she could not survive was a calm morning off the US coast in 1989. And then, on April 19th, something went wrong inside turret two. The Iowa was conducting a live-fire exercise in the Atlantic when an explosion tore through

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the turret. Forty-seven sailors died. The fire was contained. The ship survived. But 47 men never walked out of that turret. It remains the deadliest peacetime accident in [music] the history of the US Navy surface fleet. The Navy's initial

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investigation concluded that a crew member had deliberately caused the blast. The finding devastated the families of the men who died and was challenged almost immediately by independent experts. The conclusion was later retracted. [music] The exact cause was never definitively

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established. For the families of 47 men, that retraction came years too [music] late. The Iowa was decommissioned in 1990.

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She's no

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She's now a museum ship in San Pedro, Los Angeles. [music] You can walk her decks. You can go inside the gun turrets and see exactly how a 16-in shell was loaded and fired.

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Most visitors walk past turret two without knowing what happened inside it. [music] The bathtub fitted for Roosevelt is still on the ship. You can look into it.

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Here is a fact that almost nobody knows, and I mean almost nobody. So, if you already know this one, drop it in the comments. The most decorated battleship in US Navy history is not the ship that ended the Second World War. It is not

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the ship that carried a president. [music] It is not the ship you've probably already heard of. It's the USS New Jersey, 19 battle stars, four separate wars, reactivated and decommissioned four different times, more than any other battleship in American history.

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She served in the Pacific during World War II and then Korea, where she fired more shells in naval bombardment than any battleship since the war had ended.

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Decommissioned after Korea and then in 1968 pulled out of mothballs again. This time for Vietnam.

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[music] She was the only battleship to serve in that war. Deployed to the gun line off the Vietnamese coast, she fired at supply lines, troop concentrations, [music] and fortified positions that smaller ships couldn't reach. In just under a

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year, she fired more than 5,000 rounds. No fortification could withstand a direct hit from a 16-in shell, and her range put her well beyond most coastal defenses.

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She was decommissioned again in 1969, [music] quietly, without ceremony. The war was not popular, and neither was the attention.

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The battle stars were added to the record and not spoken about much. Reactivated in the 1980s, she was deployed to Lebanon where civil war had drawn in American forces. Syrian artillery in the mountains above Beirut have been firing on US Marine positions.

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The New Jersey was ordered to respond. She turned her guns toward the mountains and opened fire. One of those missions became what naval records described as the largest naval gunfire support mission since Korea.

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Syrian positions in those mountains went quiet. Four wars, 19 battle stars, never sunk, never seriously damaged. She's the only American battleship to have seen active combat in four separate decades.

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The 1940s, 1950s, 1960s, and 1980s. [music] The New Jersey is now a museum ship in Camden, New Jersey, moored on the Delaware River across from Philadelphia.

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No sign outside announces her as the most decorated battleship in American history. Most people driving past see a big gray ship and keep going. And then there's the last one. The Wisconsin. If you think the New Jersey story is strange,

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wait until you hear what the Wisconsin is actually [music] made of. The USS Wisconsin has a distinction none of the others share. She's the last battleship the United States Navy ever decommissioned. [music] When she was finally retired in 1991, it

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marked the end of the battleship era entirely. No American battleship has served since. But before that, something happened to the Wisconsin that almost nobody talks about.

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On May 6, 1956, [music] operating off the Virginia coast in heavy fog, the destroyer USS Eaton struck the Wisconsin's bow at speed, shearing off roughly 70 ft of the battleship's nose. The Wisconsin survived, [music] but she was missing a significant

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portion of her hull and rebuilding it from scratch would take months the Navy didn't want to spend.

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Here's where it gets strange. In a shipyard in Newport News, the partially completed hull of an Iowa-class battleship sat untouched. The USS Kentucky, one of the two ships ordered but never finished, had been suspended in construction since the war

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ended. She was never completed, never commissioned, but her bow section was exactly the right size. The Navy cut the bow off the Kentucky and welded it onto the Wisconsin.

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The entire operation took 16 days. The Wisconsin that returned to service, the one that would fire Tomahawk missiles in the Gulf War four decades later, is carrying the bow of a ship that never sailed. The Kentucky never crossed an ocean, never fired a gun, but

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part of her is out there in Norfolk right now. During the Gulf War in January 1991, the Wisconsin was one of the first ships to open fire when Operation Desert Storm began. She also did something that had never happened before in the history of

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naval warfare. And I promise you have not heard this one. The Wisconsin was using drones to spot and direct her 16-in gun fire against Iraqi positions on Failaka Island. During one mission, a group of Iraqi soldiers saw the drone

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approaching and did something nobody had ever done before in any war. They surrendered to it. [music] They waved white flags at an unmanned aircraft. The drone had no way to accept a surrender.

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It circled overhead. [music] They kept waving. The Wisconsin's crew watched images relayed back of Iraqi soldiers on a beach desperately trying to give themselves up to a machine.

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It was the first time in recorded military history that enemy combatants attempted to surrender to an unmanned vehicle. The Wisconsin's guns went quiet over Failaka Island. The Marines who eventually landed found the soldiers still waiting.

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The Wisconsin is now a museum ship in Norfolk, Virginia. You can walk her decks and stand on the bridge where her crew watched Tomahawks lift off into the dark above the Persian Gulf. And if you walk forward toward the bow and you know

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what you're looking for, there is a point where the Kentucky ends and the Wisconsin begins. Six Iowa-class battleships were ordered.

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[music] You've just heard about four of them. USS Illinois and USS Kentucky were both laid down during the war and never finished. As aircraft carriers and submarines proved they could do what battleships could and do it better, faster, and further away, there was no

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reason to complete them. The war didn't need more battleships. It needed to end. The Illinois was broken up before she ever left the shipyard. She never had a crew, never had a commission, never had anything. The steel was cut apart and

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sent away. The Kentucky sat in the yard for years, partially complete, while the Navy debated what to do with her. Then in 1956, the Wisconsin lost her bow and the Kentucky had a purpose nobody had planned for. Her bow was cut off, welded

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onto another ship, and the rest of her hull was scrapped in 1958. The Kentucky never fired a gun, never sailed under her own power, but part of her bow has been to the Persian Gulf and back. She made it to sea the only way

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she could. Four Iowa-class battleships made it to sea. All four are still here. No other nation that built battleships on this scale kept every single one.

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Britain scrapped hers. Japan lost hers in battle. The United States kept every Iowa-class ship that ever sailed, turned them into museums, and opened their decks to the public. The Missouri's in Pearl Harbor, her bow facing the Arizona, watching the harbor where the

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war began. The Iowa is in Los Angeles, [music] turret two still intact. The story of what happened inside is still largely untold to the people who walk past it.

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The New Jersey's in Camden, 19 battle stars on a ship most people driving past have never heard of.

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[music] The Wisconsin is in Norfolk, carrying another ship's bow, the seam in the steel somewhere near the waterline.

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Six Iowa-class battleships were ordered. Four made it to sea. All four of them are still out there.

Topics:Iowa-class battleshipsUSS MissouriUSS IowaUSS WisconsinUSS KentuckyWorld War IIGulf WarUS Navy historybattleship museumnaval warfare

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