USS Iowa (BB-61)

Moored along the industrial waterfront at the Port of Los Angeles, USS Iowa (BB-61) presents the full scale of late battleship design at the end of the dreadnought era. As the lead ship of the Iowa class and the last lead battleship ever completed for the United States, she embodies the transition from big-gun surface warfare to a Navy dominated by carriers and missiles. Her 16-inch/50 caliber main battery, secondary dual-purpose guns, and dense World War II–era anti-aircraft suite illustrate how designers tried to answer air power with ever more complex gunnery solutions. Interpreting Iowa’s history links several distinct strategic moments: Atlantic duty in 1943, when she carried Franklin D. Roosevelt and senior military leaders to the conferences that shaped Allied grand strategy; Pacific operations bombarding island targets and serving as flagship at the Japanese surrender in Tokyo Bay; then renewed relevance during the Korean War and again in the 1980s, when modernization aligned a 1940s hull with Cold War deterrence needs. Preserved today as a museum ship, Iowa offers a rare, intact reference point for studying battleship engineering, crew spaces, and evolving naval doctrine across nearly half a century.