The mission of the Pacific Battleship Center is to embody the American spirit through the preservation and interpretation of the Battleship IOWA, to educate the public on the accomplishments and sacrifices of American patriots, and to engage our guests in unique and exciting ways that bring the ship to life by connecting the past with the future.
Having seen "Mighty Mo" but not being able to see the guns, I have nothing but immense respect for the engineers, and the sailors who maintained those huge guns.
Seeing a turret move is such a magical sight. Very different from the usual static display of a museum ship, suddenly it's transformed again into the active battleship which it once was. Thanks to the entire Iowa staff and volunteers for making this a reality :)
Can you folks do a video on the technical side of how you got the turret working? Like what you had to repair, what you had to replace, what you found that was still working and just needed power, how you powered it... etc..
One of the guys, I think Marty Palmiere has a YT channel where he talked about it a lot. Just search the names of the people in the video, one of them will come up with a channel.
How many observers were there looking downward from that higher open observation platform? What is the correct name of their observation platform location?
Any issues with cries of joy being mistaken for cries of alarm? I know if I was making a machine move for the first time, I would be nervous every time I heard a noise that I wasn't expecting.
We left it off center to load projectiles. We'll turn it back to center when we finish. We move the barrels up and down manually. Check out video here: ru-vid.com/video/%D0%B2%D0%B8%D0%B4%D0%B5%D0%BE-PgzpGJf9bjs.html
So what was all of the clattering and crashing going on? For those that were familiar with the procedure, was that normal for a turret in regular use during its commissioned service? Thanks!
Cargo ship across the channel in the port unloading. The turret was silent on deck. Motor noise is contained within the barbette. Mind-blowing how smooth and quiet it is!
for all those rollers to be driven in unison by the weight of the turret alone means they have to have insanely close tolerances in size between one another and that the hardened rings are perfectly flat. for something that size and built to take abuse is just insane
Im half way done w 1/100 scale Prinze Eugen . I have built it exactly like in real life. From Keel plates , double bottom, boilers generators, maggizines, ect. I do not recommend this lol. Its very frustrating because i have made every single thing down to the plates, all to scale..... thats funny about the binoculars, cause i just made those huge binoculars on my Prinze Eugen All my ship is paper and some cardstock. And an awful lot of Elmer's glue lol. Its almost 5ft in length and already weighs over 7lbs
I'm sure this question has been asked a myriad of times but I'll throw it out one more time: Would it be possible to bring the Iowa and her sister battleships back to service-ready condition? If so, what would it take in terms of effort? Would the costs to do so be justified in today's world? Those 16" guns could still do a world of lethal damage to any target they'd be trained on. Missiles have their own place but those big guns?? Beyond awesome! Thx in advance for any answers, clues, etc. 🙂🙂
I remember being at Navy A school at Goodfellow AFB in 1985, My buddy was in the Navy and he was so disappointed he got Battleship Wisconsin because he knew he was going to be at sea for months. I saw him about a year and a half later and he said he NEVER wanted to leave Wisconsin, the most amazing ship ever, he said firing those 16 in guns made him feel INVINCIBLE. In my humble opinion it would be worth EVERY dime spent to put them back t sea or perhaps a more modern version with of course 16 in guns
Such a tremendous sense of scale seeing how cavernous the pit is for just one of the guns, and the amount of effort required to manually move it. There's a video of Mo firing rounds while at sea and seeing just how much movement the barrel has while it remains trained on its target shows just how much machinery was involved in these things.
Are these displays still there as of June 2024? I may be traveling to California and visiting Iowa next month (The Battleship Iowa...what were you thinking? 😉)
Cool info! I did not know there was a landing party that went ashore at the end of the war for some occupation duty....and I read a lot about WWII history.
USS Dyess (DD-880) Was named after my great grandfather! Aquilla james dyess was the only man to ever man to ever recive the medal of honer and the carnegie medal
Question for the muesem and another who actually got to turn the guns dueing her deployments: 1. If orders were given to turn a bearing, would it be turned faster than it's shown now, or would you turn it at a steady pace as shown? 2. Is there a separate controller for elevation, and does the previous question about speed still apply? [Edit: i saw the video regarding the elevation and have my answers!] Sincerely, An interested and curious civilian
1. When the turret is turning "full speed," it can go about 4 degrees per second. We were taking it easy when we turned that day because it had been sitting so long. We didn't want to push it too hard.
It's funny to hear Adam talk about how freaky it was to stick your arm in there because literally my first thought seeing it was "I'd be terrified to have to grease that, imagine if it moved!"
