USS Iowa moving to Los Angeles

[Ivanhoe]

http://www.signonsandiego.com/news/2011/sep/08/famed-battleship-iowa-moving-southern-california/

 

The battleship Iowa, which packed so much firepower it was nicknamed "The Big Stick", will be relocated from Suisun Bay near San Francisco to San Pedro in the Port of Los Angeles, where the 887-foot warship will become a public museum.

 

The Navy says it is donating the Iowa to the Pacific Battleship Center, which will arrange for the ship to undergo some repairs before it is towed to Southern California, possibly at the end of this year. The Iowa is currently part of the National Defense Reserve Fleet -- or Mothball Fleet -- up north.

 

I hope their planned tours belowdecks come to fruition;

 

http://www.pacificbattleship.com/tours.html

[Archie Pellagio]

Wow, I assumed they were all museums...

[Ivanhoe]

Wow, I assumed they were all museums...

 

Sadly, no. When money was flowing through the streets like rainwater, the USN kept rebuffing attempts to relinquish them to museums. Museums wanted the Iowas, and in the 1980s and 1990s had the money to move them and set them up, but no sale. I guess the impending budgetary storm convinced the Navy that carrying manpower-intensive ships in the mothball fleet was foolish. Personally, I think they should have done some sort of reserve fleet thing in the 1980s; loan them to museums with a proviso that they could be recalled to active duty if necessary. That way, everybody would have gotten what they wanted; tourists could have had much earlier access to WWII history, and the Bureau of Ships/NAVSEA/whatever could have maintained their fantasy of manning multiple Iowas to send into the North Pacific against the commie hordes.

 

Like Stuart, I'd love to see them in 1945 config, but getting all the parts back would be prohibitively expensive even if they could find enough guns etc.

[beans4]

Just curious, was Iowa's #2 turret ever repaired?

[RETAC21]

Just curious, was Iowa's #2 turret ever repaired?

 

Nope.

[RETAC21]

Sadly, no. When money was flowing through the streets like rainwater, the USN kept rebuffing attempts to relinquish them to museums. Museums wanted the Iowas, and in the 1980s and 1990s had the money to move them and set them up, but no sale. I guess the impending budgetary storm convinced the Navy that carrying manpower-intensive ships in the mothball fleet was foolish. Personally, I think they should have done some sort of reserve fleet thing in the 1980s; loan them to museums with a proviso that they could be recalled to active duty if necessary. That way, everybody would have gotten what they wanted; tourists could have had much earlier access to WWII history, and the Bureau of Ships/NAVSEA/whatever could have maintained their fantasy of manning multiple Iowas to send into the North Pacific against the commie hordes.

 

Like Stuart, I'd love to see them in 1945 config, but getting all the parts back would be prohibitively expensive even if they could find enough guns etc.

 

I seem to recall Congress having a hand in forcing the Navy to keep them when they wanted them scrapped in the 90s (?)

[Doug Kibbey]

Sadly, no. When money was flowing through the streets like rainwater, the USN kept rebuffing attempts to relinquish them to museums. Museums wanted the Iowas, and in the 1980s and 1990s had the money to move them and set them up, but no sale. I guess the impending budgetary storm convinced the Navy that carrying manpower-intensive ships in the mothball fleet was foolish. Personally, I think they should have done some sort of reserve fleet thing in the 1980s; loan them to museums with a proviso that they could be recalled to active duty if necessary. That way, everybody would have gotten what they wanted; tourists could have had much earlier access to WWII history, and the Bureau of Ships/NAVSEA/whatever could have maintained their fantasy of manning multiple Iowas to send into the North Pacific against the commie hordes.

 

Like Stuart, I'd love to see them in 1945 config, but getting all the parts back would be prohibitively expensive even if they could find enough guns etc.

 

Wasn't San Francisco offered one, but the city government declined it as "icky" and symbolic of everything that is wrong with this wretched country?

[Murph]

They should hault it up river and dock it somewhere in Iowa.

[Ivanhoe]

Wasn't San Francisco offered one, but the city government declined it as "icky" and symbolic of everything that is wrong with this wretched country?

 

Yep; http://www.sfweekly.com/content/printVersion/410448/

 

SF also had an opportunity to be given the USS Hornet, also rejected.

[Corinthian]

They should hault it up river and dock it somewhere in Iowa.

 

They could use elephants and a limitless supply of forced labor....

 

 

[BP]

Be nice if someone could convert one of these fully back to WW2 spec.

 

OTOH, looking at the amount of AA armament they were packing back then, it would be no easy task...

 

 

Massachusetts, Alabama and North Carolina are all good examples of WWII configured battlewagons, having been fairly new ships during the war, and all being decommissioned shortly thereafter. North Carolina recently had new teak decks installed, and Massachusetts had been in drydock a few years before I was last there, so they are in pretty good shape.

 

I still don;t know what we're going to do with seven battleships memorial in the Land of Sam, especially with the WWII generation passing rapidly, but they're pretty cool things to see.

[JOE BRENNAN]

I still don;t know what we're going to do with seven battleships memorial in the Land of Sam, especially with the WWII generation passing rapidly, but they're pretty cool things to see.

Sooner or later, same situation as USS Olympia, times many (including all the other WWII warship memorials). Once the personal living contact with the events (veterans themselves, and memories of younger relatives who knew them personally) passes and wanes respectively, the amount of attention will dwindle markedly. That's not un-patriotism, but just how it goes, though the growth in counter-traditional values will only make it more so.

 

The ships that have deep pocketed benefactors like states, or perhaps those in very high traffic areas (USS Intrepid in Manhattan, albeit remote part of Manhattan relative to most other tourist attractions) may survive a long time. Those with weaker financial support will decay pathetically. WWII was not as big a deal in American history as is implied by all those ship memorials compared to the very small number for all the other wars, once it's being compared 'apples to apples' with other events out of living memory.

 

Even the pre-Iowa fast BB's had their light AA armaments reduced in their short post-WWII careers. The maintenance effort and susceptibility to weather and (larger) gun blast damage of some mount locations couldn't be justified in peacetime. So ships like Massachusetts have the relevant types of late war light AA, but not the actual numbers. And MA's total number of 40/20mm mounts was actually reduced even before the end of the war, in part substituting smaller number of twin for larger number of single 20's carried most of the war, but also peak 40mm armament was 18*quad, but only 15 were fitted by war's end.

 

Joe

Edited September 11, 2011 by JOE BRENNAN

[AdmiralB]

Sooner or later, same situation as USS Olympia, times many (including all the other WWII warship memorials). Once the personal living contact with the events (veterans themselves, and memories of younger relatives who knew them personally) passes and wanes respectively, the amount of attention will dwindle markedly.

 

 

I'm thinking you're correct. Glad I got to see Texas when I did.

[Lampshade111]

The lack of eccentric billionaires willing to fund such things these days is depressing. You're telling me no filthy rich people out there love this sort of thing? Hell, I'd buy this (now being scrapped) and use it as my yacht.

Edited September 12, 2011 by Lampshade111

[Ivanhoe]

Dunno about the other USN ships at museums, but at least two problems exist w.r.t. the USS Wisconsin. The first is simply location; its a pain to drive into downtown Norfolk, find parking, and then walk to the Nauticus center. The second is that the exhibit itself includes essentially nothing belowdecks, at least that was the case the last time I was there. The USS North Carolina was a much more satisfying visit for me.

[Archie Pellagio]

The biggest problem is most of them are of little real significance.

 

I was surprised to hear about ships like Massachusetts and Wisconsin being museums.

 

Some I can understand (Missouri in particular) but others are just cool toys that don't surprise me at all people don't care about.

[Corinthian]

The lack of eccentric billionaires willing to fund such things these days is depressing. You're telling me no filthy rich people out there love this sort of thing? Hell, I'd buy this (now being scrapped) and use it as my yacht.

 

Because filthy rich people nowadays prefer to buy the affections of young women. Or sports cars to attract the affections of young women.

[Archie Pellagio]

Because filthy rich people nowadays prefer to buy the affections of young women. Or sports cars to attract the affections of young women.

 

Hmmmm...

 

Dusty hunk of rusting metal who's guns don't go bang...

 

OR hot nubile young play thing that makes your gun go BANG!

 

Seems a pretty easy choice to me...

[Garth]

Dunno about the other USN ships at museums, but at least two problems exist w.r.t. the USS Wisconsin. The first is simply location; its a pain to drive into downtown Norfolk, find parking, and then walk to the Nauticus center. The second is that the exhibit itself includes essentially nothing belowdecks, at least that was the case the last time I was there. The USS North Carolina was a much more satisfying visit for me.

 

I think Wisky's having her belowdecks areas slowly opened, now that she's been struck off the NVR, is no longer being preserved in (ostensibly) Cat-B status, and is fully the charge of the city of Norfolk.

 

From what I've read they're doing the opening the right way; gradually and in sections making sure that what they do open is properly protected before they let the tourists in.

 

Wisky, like Missouri, has the benefit of being so close to a major naval facility. They do a LOT of ceremonies aboard her, and the Navy repays via volunteer service for upkeep and the like.

[Ken Estes]

Yep; http://www.sfweekly.com/content/printVersion/410448/

 

SF also had an opportunity to be given the USS Hornet, also rejected.

Do you actually read your links?

 

....

"San Francisco just wasn't meant to be," Wong says, reflecting on the experience. "In hindsight, we realize that we were spinning our wheels in a place that didn't want us."

 

But others say there was more to the city's rejection of the Iowa than meets the eye.

 

After the supervisors' vote, an advocacy group for gays in the military approached Wong and Stephens with the idea of including a diversity museum in connection with the Iowa exhibit to tell the story of minorities, women, gays, and lesbians in the military. Jim Maloney, executive director of the Military Equality Alliance, says his group was on the verge of winning support from a majority of supervisors for a second resolution supportive of the Iowa.

 

Instead, he says, "Merylin and Bill sort of inexplicably decided that they'd had enough and walked away [from San Francisco]."

 

Wong made the exit in a theatrical fashion at a meeting of the San Francisco Port Commission last March. In a stunning turn, she announced that she was terminating her efforts to win the commission's approval for her plans, after more than a dozen members of her own organization succeeded in persuading the commissioners to give the group a 90-day extension for considering the plans.

 

"We were all flabbergasted," says Ray Guiducci, a former Wong ally who was among those who spoke on behalf of the extension, and who is now part of Morariu's effort pushing Pier 48. He says that the couple's withdrawal "came totally out of left field," inasmuch as Wong and Stephens, along with several others of their group, had spent four hours at a restaurant the night before "carefully going over our presentation and strategizing how we were going to keep [the proposal] alive."

 

Even commissioners were stunned.

 

"I just thought it was bizarre," recalls commission president Ann Lazarus, who says the group's main problem was that it "never presented an adequate financial plan to demonstrate that it had a proposal with substance."

 

Morariu, who had worked with Wong and Stephens for more than a year, says he felt "kicked in the stomach" when the couple pulled the plug on the San Francisco effort. And he felt "even worse" after later discovering that, while ostensibly attempting to turn things around in San Francisco, the couple had been talking privately with Vallejo officials about Mare Island.

 

--------------------------------------------------------------------------------

 

Morariu's entity, known as the San Francisco Naval Heritage Museum, also has little money. But unlike its competitors, it has no Web site, has sought no publicity, and expresses no expectation that, even if it had San Francisco's blessing, the Navy would respond favorably to its idea to park the Iowa at Pier 48.

 

"Our aim is simply to get a foot in the door in the event that the Navy says no to everyone this round. We'd like to be part of the game in the future," says the Fremont firefighter and Navy veteran, who served on the USS New Jersey in the 1980s.

 

His split with Wong and Stephens was less than amicable.

 

Wong accused Morariu of making off with proprietary information and briefly threatened to sue. Morariu scrambled to meet the Navy's application deadline. In the process, his group ruffled feathers at the USS Hornet Museum by drafting a proposal, which it subsequently had to replace, implying that the Hornet Museum was ready to throw in with the Iowa if the Navy were to endorse Pier 48.

 

"There were no hard feelings," says Bob Fish, the Hornet trustee. "We'd actually love to be part of a maritime museum with the Iowa in San Francisco, but, as you could understand, it was never our intention to be part of someone else's bid."

 

While Morariu's group has had trouble getting off the ground, the city of Stockton's effort appears to have taken a spectacular nosedive.

 

With Pombo's backing, the Stockton bid was timed to take advantage of the resistance Wong and Stephens were having in San Francisco. Looking for a chance to jump-start development of a former naval facility at Rough and Ready Island in the San Joaquin River, near its downtown, Stockton port officials made a generous offer. The port would make available a pier, an adjacent 15,000-square-foot building for use as a visitor center, and enough parking to accommodate thousands of cars.

 

The sponsoring group, the Battleship Iowa Museum & Memorial Foundation — headed by Jim Dodge, the last commanding officer at the closed naval air station in Alameda — heralded the "gift" as worth $33 million. Sponsors confidently predicted that if the city were willing to kick in another $10.9 million to tow the ship from Suisun Bay and prepare it as a museum, the Iowa could be theirs.

 

But Pombo's attempt at legislative fiat to circumvent the Navy's role in deciding the ship's fate rankled the Navy and influential members of California's congressional delegation. Sens. Feinstein and Barbara Boxer, as well as incoming House Speaker Nancy Pelosi, had been instrumental in appropriating more than $3 million to have the Iowa towed to California in 2001, at a time when it was widely expected that the ship would end up in San Francisco.

 

Having the Iowa brought to the West Coast from Rhode Island was part of an elaborate battleship swap that Feinstein and others helped engineer, after former Sen. Strom Thurmond (R-South Carolina) exerted political muscle to get the Iowa's mothballed sister ship, the New Jersey, relocated from Bremerton, Wash., to the East Coast.

 

In late 2005, Feinstein interceded to ensure that the Pombo move went nowhere.

 

Last September, the Stockton effort suffered a critical blow. That's when a consulting firm commissioned by the City Council concluded that the price tag for turning the ship into a museum would be $38 million — not the $10.9 million that the ship's backers had earlier estimated. Elected officials have since backed away from subsidizing the project.

 

 

Iowa class BBs and Forrestal Class CVs are fiscal albotrosses; even smaller vessels such as Yorktown are headed toward Olympia-like states

[ScottBrim]

Iowa class BBs and Forrestal Class CVs are fiscal albotrosses; even smaller vessels such as Yorktown are headed toward Olympia-like states.

The battleship preservationists in southern California have had their eyes on USS Iowa for almost two decades.

 

Knowing that she would end up as razor blades if she stayed on the east coast, they worked with the California Congressional delegation and with other California groups to move the ship west. That was accomplished in 2001.

 

The southern Californians have all their museum ship planning ducks lined up in a nice neat row, their proposal has strong financial and community support, plus southern California has a large pool of military veterans available to do the all-important volunteer support work.

 

Their museum plan has as much chance for success as any plan possibly could, and so it had to have been an easy decision on the Navy's part to give the ship to Los Angeles.

 

As for USS Olympia, if we had a hundred million dollars to spend, we could bring her here to Eastern Washington, set her up on dry land next to the Columbia River, and then proceed to do a dry-land restoration.

 

After that? Well, we would just have to cross that bridge when we came to it. (The power of positive thinking, etc. etc. etc. etc.)

 

OK, does anybody out there in TankNet Land have a hundred million dollars they would like to invest in this effort?

[Ivanhoe]

Do you actually read your links?

 

Yeah, I kinda do. And when I was a teenager I learned that when politicians say "yes" they often mean "no". Of course the SF BoS is going to claim they were on board, after the fact. Costs nothing, avoids recriminations. if they had wanted the thing, instead of many years of politicking and wranging, they would have green-lighted the project such that Wong et al would not have felt the need to shop it around.