USS IOWA FULL TOUR | Naval Battleship Legend

Hi Peterson fans. Welcome aboard the Battleship Iowa. I'm Jonathan Williams and I am going to take you on an adventure aboard this 887 feet, 3-inch marvel of engineering. The first stop we're going to take, we're going to show you the inside of those large 16-inch guns. The biggest guns to ever be placed aboard a United States battleship. So let's head out and see what we have to offer. You may ask where the Battleship Iowa is located at. It's in San Pedro, which is a neighborhood of Los Angeles. So we're in the Port of Los Angeles complex. More cargo comes through this port than any port in the Western Hemisphere. Down here at the LA waterfront, which it has become branded as, we're under a rapid redevelopment. We have a brand new waterfront retail complex that will be built within the next year and a half that has a craft brewery, craft type of restaurants, a full walking waterfront and entertainment experiences, as well as a 5,000 seat amphitheater. When you're out here on the water, the weather is beautiful just like it is today. It's cooler than it is in the valley and there's no better place than to be here watching the movement of trade and commerce and the movement of our cruise ships coming in out of the port and looking at this beautiful view of the most iconic battleship on the West Coast. Right now we're inside Turret 1 aboard historic Battleship Iowa. This ship has three triple turrets. That means nine guns that fire 16-inch .50 caliber shells, a range of almost 24 miles. Can you imagine each one of those guns firing a shell twice in one minute? There'd be about 75 sailors in this entire turret structure, which goes down approximately five decks to include powder flats, shell flats, an electrical deck, as well as what we see here with the gun. You would have a 1,900 to 2,700 pound round that would come up from the shell decks and then you would put six 110 pound bags of powder behind that shell to propel it. It could be fired locally, it could be fired in the main or secondary plot, which we'll show you that on this brief tour, or it could be fired from up in the bridge area. So let's head to the next spot where I'm going to show you some historic space that really was a part of this ship's history. Maneuvering the ship for the commanding officer can be one of the more difficult things to do, especially in a challenging environment like we see here at the Port of Los Angeles. Thankfully, we don't have to do that. But up here we're on the O5 level exterior bridge. You can see the beautiful view we have out over the bow as we look out towards the exit of the Port of Los Angeles and in the distance over here you could see Catalina. This is where they would control the ship from, or actually monitor the ship from, and they'd control it one deck below us in the armored conning tower. You'd monitor the speed, you'd monitor the amount of power that you would put towards the engines. This is a steam-powered ship, and we're going to show you that space momentarily, but when you have four screws propelling at 212,000 shaft horsepower, you can imagine how fast this goes. At 35 knots of maximum speed in the ocean, this may beat some of your steam-powered cars at the Peterson. So join me in looking at our engine room. Here we are on the third deck passageway, famously known as Broadway. What you can see here is you can see a main deck rail or a deck rail that goes right through here. This would be used to transport machinery as you repaired the engine rooms and the fire rooms down here, or transport 16-inch shells between the aft turret and the front two turrets. There's four engine rooms aboard here, all with steam turbines. Those steam turbines generate a total of 212,000 shaft horsepower. They're fired by four boiler rooms with eight boilers. Those boilers are 600 psi. That steam would turn that turbine, which would then turn the shaft, which would turn an 18-foot screw and a 17-and-a-half-foot screw. Four screws, actually. Now, for those of you that love boats, too, you can imagine what that speed looks like when you're moving 57,000 tons of displacement through the water. It is absolutely incredible, and the fishtail is enough to swamp the berm at the side of the Mississippi River. Here we are in fire room number four. In here is where the steam is generated. That steam propels the steam turbines, and it also would give you the steam necessary to cook food and even the warm water. As I touch this valve, I have no idea what this valve does because I didn't serve in this space, but I can tell you my grandfather did as a young man. He served aboard the sister ship USS Missouri. In 1943, he joined the Missouri at New York Navy Shipyard, being built right next to this ship here, the Iowa. He served aboard her until the Japanese surrender in 1945. He was a water tender first class. He was in charge of fire room number four aboard the Missouri. These men served in 120-degree heat under the pressure, the immense pressure of war, not knowing what was happening above, whether they were going to lose their ship at a moment's notice, not knowing when those 90-degree turns that caused the ship to list at 25, 30, 35 degrees, if that meant the ship was never going to come back. But they continued to stay on their duty stations. They continued to make sure they made steam, and they continued to make sure that steam was given to the engine room to propel those screws. Those men, like all people that serve, are heroes. So here we are in one of the engine rooms of the battleship Iowa. This is number four engine room. Here we have our steam turbine, and that drives a reduction gear. And the reduction gear will drive the shaft, which drives the screw. Now, I got to say, for those of you on the Peterson, you know, I got a deepest respect for you. But I always tease my dear friend Kip Cypress, who's also involved here at the Iowa and supports what we do, about who has the most shaft horsepower, or who has the most horsepower. And I got to tell you, I got every one of you beat. At 212,000 shaft horsepower, I think we win hands down. I may also have you beat on what it takes to keep this thing going, all right? A 1943 ship, compare that to some of your 1943 cars. Yeah, so I got you beat in a couple ways. If you're like me, I would call this the Four Seasons Hotel. But it's not quite the Four Seasons, obviously. How would you like to spend nine months at sea right here? At least you got yourself a bunk and a locker. That is all the belongings that you would have aboard ship as a sailor. In the 1980s, 1,500 plus sailors served aboard this ship. And in World War II in the 1950s, in the Korea War, you had almost 2,700 sailors that served aboard here. This is tight confines, obviously. These are the enlisted sailors areas. But I can tell you, if you're a sailor working 16 to 20-hour days, that's the Four Seasons. November of 1943, we had President Franklin Delano Roosevelt right here in this cabin. He was joined by his entire Joint Chiefs of Staff. What they did on that voyage is they headed east across the Atlantic to the Tehran Conference. They were dropped off in Mirzal-Kabir before hopping on an airplane to go into a conference that met with Joseph Stalin and Winston Churchill. They discussed what the future of Germany and Europe would be. They discussed the D-Day plans, the early D-Day plans to invade France. They came back aboard the ship on the way back to the United States in a very secret mission. And some of those early conversations happened around this table right here. This is what today we call the President's Cabin. We have had President Franklin Delano Roosevelt inside this cabin that spent 22 days aboard the ship, as well as President George H.W. Bush and President Ronald Reagan. This ship is truly historic, and right here in this cabin, you get to experience that. As we continue on this tour, we're about to walk by the Starboard Side Harpoon Anti-Ship Missiles. These missiles were added in the 1980 reconfiguration. They were added to be able to sink any ships that may cause any potential threat to the vessel. Of course, we just don't go shooting missiles at everything, so there would have to be a real present threat. They would be fired from what we call the Combat Engagement Center. We're going to head over and look at the Tomahawk deck now. The Tomahawk missiles were the Tomahawks that we still utilize today, just an earlier version. They have a range of over 1,000 miles, and this ship was fitted with 32 of them back in the 1980s. Here we are at a quad launcher of Tomahawk missiles. Once again, the Tomahawk missiles fire over 1,000 miles, actually up to about 1,500 miles. We also care about OEM equipment, just like you do at Peterson. It matters having the factory-built equipment. The problem is, on a battleship, there's not many places you can find the parts for these, so you either have to make them or you have to dig them up below decks. This is the area where the 16-inch guns would be fired and the calculation would be made depending on how in the distance of the ships that would be over the horizon. At 24 miles, you can imagine you can't see something like that from the main deck. That would be seen from the top of the ship in the optical viewfinder. The Kingfisher planes in the 1940s, the helicopters in the 50s, and the RPVs, the drones in the 1980s, would scope out at 24 miles, provide the data back to the ship. That data would be fed into this computer here, which is 1940s technology, calculated, the barrels would actually adjust on sea condition, and when ready to fire, these lights would tell you which turrets were prepared. When they were ready to fire and the formulas were set in, here we go. Boom, you fire a gun. As you look around, you saw plenty of computers in this space. Those are 1940s technology. In the 1980s, upgrading it to the modern semiconductor technology would have been almost impossible because the vibration of those large 16-inch guns would have pretty much fried those computers the minute it went off. So the only way to continue serving was to keep this technology from the 1940s. The technology that was proven to be accurate, to be able to function with these large 16-inch guns, was kept through the 1980s and used with amazing accuracy. Meet a couple of my friends. They're culinary specialists in today's Navy. They're mess specialists in yesteryear's Navy. They're preparing a nice hot meal for all of us today. Now, obviously, it's great that they're following the COVID protocol. It's important aboard Iowa that we follow COVID protocol, especially this time in our history. I personally am not wearing a mask. That's because I'm talking to you, but I have no one else around me. So I hope you'll join me on this tour as you get to experience some of this wonderful food. I'd recommend you probably don't eat this food. But when you're aboard, we do have Vicki's Dog House, gourmet hot dogs with sides and salads. So you'll be able to enjoy a meal right here aboard the Iowa. April 19, 1989, the center gun of Turret 2 exploded. You've seen inside Turret 1. You've seen how tight that is. It's a dangerous job. This ship lost 47 sailors in the largest loss of life peacetime incident in the United States Navy. Another 1,400-plus sailors fought to save their ship that day. Every day, we honor the service of those sailors. Every day, we help veterans and military service members throughout L.A. and across the country access their benefits and help them transition. It's because of these 47 sailors that lost their lives aboard here and the 1,400-plus sailors that fought to save their ship. I want to thank the Peterson for allowing you to join me on this short tour of the battleship Iowa. There, of course, is a lot more that you can see when you come here to visit the Iowa. Not only are you visiting a piece of history, you are also supporting one of the last remaining battleships of the United States. You can learn more about our organization at pacificbattleship.com. You can find more about what we do, including our veterans programming, our veterans resource center, our education programs, our tour programs, and even our community programs, including first responder training and disaster preparedness. No matter who you are and if you're in L.A., you may be affected by something that we're involved in. So I encourage you to come down, see what we do, see how we can give you an experience of a lifetime and a memorable experience, and thank you for joining me on this journey.