They were designed to be the best… they met enemies face to face, endured tragedies and enjoyed victories… they went down in history due
to the bravery of their crews… they are the ships that deserve to be called “Naval Legends!” In this episode: Battleship Iowa: a
Trump Card That Was Never Played In the 1930s, the whole world was crazy
about two things: swing music and… guns. The passion that politicians
and industrial moguls showed to the latter had all
the signs of gigantomania. By finding legal loopholes in international
arms control treaties and conventions, or simply ignoring them, countries were constantly building new
and unprecedented weapon systems, for both land and sea. They were becoming bigger, heavier, and more powerful. The global arms race involved
the most advanced technologies of the time and huge
financial resources. In order to compete with any
of our potential enemies enemies it was felt necessary to
increase the size of our ships. So the Iowa was a
45,000-ton battleship. The prior ships had been
less: the South Dakota-class and the North Carolina-class. A battleship is basically a
floating artillery battery, so her size directly depends on
the size of her primary guns. The 16-inch main batteries
on battleship Iowa, of which there are
three, three turrets. Each turret has three guns… Everything about the ship design
is structured around becoming… being a platform for
the 16-inch guns. It’s like small arms: there is a common
misbelief that the pistol is designed first, and then the cartridge. No, the Defense Ministry
always orders the cartridge. The same for ships: the
enemy has 15 inches and 12 inches Let’s make 16 inches, because we already have
some of the technologies. But let’s not make it 40, but 50 calibers
long. And they made a 16-inch gun. So the ship was built to
carry this particular gun Key Specifications
of Battleship Iowa Total displacement: 57,540 tons Length: 887 feet 6 inches Beam: 108 feet 3 inches Draft: 36 feet 1 inch Armament: Primary armament: Nine Mark 7
guns in three triple turrets Caliber: 16 inches Maximum range: 24 miles Dual-purpose artillery: 20 Mark 12 guns in 10
coaxial Mark 28 turrets Caliber: 5 inches Anti-aircraft armament:
19 quadruple Bofors guns 52 Oerlikon Mark
2/3/4 autocannons Air group: 3 Vought OS2U
Kingfisher floatplanes During construction,
Iowa’s armor was declared higher than it actually was,
in order to mislead the enemy. The real specifications
are as follows: Main belt: 12.1 inches Main turrets: 7.2–17 inches Conning tower: 7.2–17.3 inches Main armor deck: 6–7 inches Iowa has the most powerful
power plant among battleships. Four geared turbine engines with eight turbines produced
by General Electric. Eight boilers produced
by Babcock & Wilcox Power: 212,000 hp Maximum speed: about 33 knots Cruising range: about 20,000 nautical
miles at a speed of 15 knots Battleship Iowa had a very unique
hull design and the bull nose. And you can also see that her lines
were very tapered, almost aerodynamic. …and that’s all part and
parcel of how they got this 57,000-ton behemoth
up to a speed of 33 knots. …which is very, very
fast and almost… you could say it’s
almost power boat speed, you know, very unusual
for a warship... This became an important
advantage later on, during the war in the
Pacific Theatre. With a speed like that, Iowa could
efficiently escort carrier task forces. They put about 140 20-mm and 40-mm
anti-aircraft guns on the ship, and the carriers loved them because
they were able to protect the carrier. When Iowa was still under
construction, the Americans realized that she would play a secondary role
in battles against the Japanese fleet. Aircraft carriers were becoming the
main striking force of the navy. But a giant like Iowa played a
worthy role in the world war, too. The battleship Iowa was
commissioned in early 1943. Its first mission
on was to go north… Naval intelligence felt that the
Tirpitz, the German battleship, may be coming into
the North Atlantic. The battleship Iowa was sent on an early
mission north to block the Tirpitz. Suppose battleships Iowa
and Tirpitz met in battle. Iowa had higher speed, greater
maneuverability, and longer range of fire. Tirpitz would be trying
to get in close to Iowa, and Iowa would be
looking to keep away, maneuvering and firing at
Tirpitz from a great distance. Iowa would have definitely
won this battle. But the two naval heavyweight
warriors never met, so we can only imagine how
their duel would have ended. Then, their second mission, on
October 12, 1943, was to accompany, or I should say, carry Franklin Roosevelt
across the Atlantic to North Africa. From there he went on to visit Churchill
and Stalin in the Tehran Conference. Roosevelt was on board
the ship for 15 days. When President Roosevelt came on board,
the first thing he saw was Vicky. Now, the first captain,
Captain John McCrea, brought this little
dog home one day. And his wife looked
at the dog and said, “Get that thing out of here.” So Captain McCrea took the dog
and brought him on the ship. And President Roosevelt asked
“Who is this little dog?” And Captain McCrea said, “Well, that’s
our little ship’s mascot, named Vicky.” So Vicky spent the
whole 15 days of the Roosevelt’s passage in the
cabin with Roosevelt, he would roll or play tricks. While he wasn’t very
good as a sailor, he was very good as a dog. And Roosevelt really
enjoyed Vicky. In early 1944, battleship Iowa joined
the United States Fifth Fleet, which operated in
the Pacific Ocean. By that time, US forces were already attacking
Japanese positions on various islands. The battleship’s role was to provide
fire support to landing troops and escort aircraft carriers during
air raids on the Philippines, the Ryukyu Islands, and Taiwan. …the ship crisscrossing
across a lot of these small islands that are
really forgotten now. At one point they went up
to support MacArthur's landing in the Philippines
at Leyte Gulf. And unfortunately they
went the wrong way at Leyte Gulf and chased
a Japanese carrier force that was really a
decoy for the landing. They came back, but a little too late
to assist in the Battle of Leyte Gulf. They missed that one opportunity to
maybe have a contact with the Yamato. The two ships never
met in combat; and both countries kept their
capital battleships at, shall we say arm’s length,
kept them at distance, because there was great
political risk to having either one of the ships
damaged severely in battle. Japanese industry, in
those days, simply didn’t have the resources to build
ships in large numbers. The solution was simple: to
make huge ships that would exceed the largest ships of other
nations—super battleships. Battleship Yamato is the biggest
battleship in the world. Her shell velocity was 2,600 ft/s while its weight could
be up to 3,300 pounds Such a large gun could
inflict very serious damage. They beat us. The Japanese
essentially broke the treaty. On the other side, Соединённые Штаты Америки. the United States of America
was simply building a ship that met the contemporary
requirements of naval warfare and could easily, without any extra effort,
be built by the American industry… During the war the Japanese fleet could
afford to build only two battleships, while the Americans were able to
construct more and more new battleships… The Americans were simply building another
ship, and she turned out to be a good one... The Iowa, I think (of course,
I would probably say this), would’ve taken the day in a
battle against the Yamato. She had very accurate fire
control for a ship of the 1940s. And I think that would be an advantage for
her if that ship fights such a battle. It was so accurate that in 1984,
when they recommissioned the ship, they kept the existing system in place,
even though they had modern computers. The Iowa could put a round
very, very close to the target, so accurate that they
didn’t need to change it. Iowa was the most dangerous
enemy for Yamato. If they had met at a range from
from 66,000 to 98,000 feet especially in a one-on-one
fight and in fine weather, Iowa would have
no chance of winning. However, thanks to better radar Iowa
could fight in bad weather and at night. Powerful guns, high speed, and precise
radar made Iowa a formidable adversary. If these two battleships
had fought each other, the victory would depend completely
on the battle conditions… …We could get in quick and fire. But
then there’s always the lucky shot. The changing tactics of naval warfare
increased the role of aircraft carriers and deprived Iowa of a chance to use its
primary armament against surface ships. So the battleship used its firepower
against the enemy’s coastal positions. On August 29, 1945, when the
war was virtually over, Iowa stood side by side with her sister
ship Missouri and entered the Tokyo Bay as part of the occupation force. We were next to our sister
ship, the Missouri. And the Missouri, of course,
is where Douglas MacArthur accepted the final
surrender of the Japanese. Now, we like to say on the
Iowa that had Roosevelt lived, that signing might have been on the
Iowa, because he had been on this ship. But President Truman
was from the state of Missouri, and so the signing
was on the Missouri. A sailor that was on
that trip once told me… I asked him if he was sad that he didn’t
get the signing instead of the Missouri. And he said, “No, not really. The war was over, we had lived, we were
going home to our wives and children, and all the guys on the
Missouri were busy preparing a photo opportunity for
Douglas MacArthur.” At the end of the war, we brought
back a large number of American POWs, Japanese prisoners of war… And we brought them home and sailed
through the Golden Gate bridge. And the war was over. For her service in World War II, the battleship
was decorated with nine battle stars. In 1949, Iowa was decommissioned into
the reserve fleet, but two years later she was recommissioned and sent on
a mission to the coast of Korea. The battleship returned home
with two more battle stars. From 1958 to 1984, Iowa was
kept in reserve, and after modernization she returned
to active service again. However, the event that took
place in the late 1980s showed that battleships can also sustain
losses outside of wartime. On April 19, 1989, the biggest tragedy
that ever struck this ship occurred. The ship was about 400 miles
or so north of Puerto Rico. As I understand it, they had loaded
the shell in the Number 2 turret, rammed in the powder, and they were about to
close the breach when something happened. There was an explosion
that killed 47 men... It was by far the biggest
loss of life on the ship. Having recovered from the
tragedy, the battleship returned home and joined
the reserve fleet. In 2001, 58 years since her launch
by the New York Naval Shipyard, after she had crossed tens
of thousands of miles and fired thousands of
shells at the enemies, battleship Iowa was berthed
in the Port of Los Angeles. She’s unique, because she did
have three careers in the Navy: World War II, Korea,
and the 1980s. And then now she’s on her fourth
career as a museum ship...
