I think the Iowas’ long-standing relevance and staying power were down to the robustness of their architecture in terms of their power plant and reserve of buoyancy, which enabled them to be adapted over the decades as technologies and missions changed. That a ship designed in the 1930s would come to operate electromagnetic countermeasures and missiles that could be guided via data collected in *space* is almost unbelievable.
I mean... it could come from 10 meters or 10 light years and it wouldn't change much for the ship, as long as the transmission was strong enough. Otherwise, you're right on point, but I'd say that this still was only possible because there was no arms race, and because, in a way, obsolescence "freed" it from an arms race.
@@bradclifton5248not so much on the shells. The big shells only go where the magazine with hoist is. Reserve does help with food or smaller munitions or new like the missiles they got.
It’s called Service Life. I was part of the reactivation team. We conducted the initial material condition assessment including Deep insurance spares and parts stored aboard and ashore. When we cracked her open we found all sorts of magazines and newspapers from the 50’s and 60’s. The ship was so well prepared and preserved it was like all we needed to do was dust off stuff. Not entirely true but it was pretty amazing. Did most of the inspections at the Philadelphia Naval Shipyard Mothball Fleet Reserve Basin. The doors on the Battle Bridge were like walking into a Vault at Fort Knox. The ship was pristine after sitting dormant for all those years. This was 1984 thru 85 with the New Jersey and the Wisconsin. Was also onboard during the Gunnex, Collimation, Camming and Contoring Recertification evolutions. Great Job keeping this history alive. So many things about those Ships that just cannot be built today. Incredible Beasts. I recall an Atlantic Crossing and we were in very heavy seas. The expansion joints in main deck passageway always kind of scared me a little. Because I knew approximately how big of a gap was being created as we rose and fell with the swell. If you somehow slipped and your leg or arm should fall into the gap while it was closing it would separate your body part and then crush it into molecular goo. Most everybody navigating the Main deck passageway hesitated and made a timed move across the sliding steel covers. I have many more stories about living aboard at sea, during GQ Gun Exercises and standing out on the Observation Deck just behind Main Gun Mount #2 for an entire day. It was maybe 5 hours but it felt like a lifetime and once we went out the Watertight Door and they called General Quarters we couldn’t open the Watertight Door to get back inside Officers Country without permission from the Bridge. I think it was 03 Level. Long time now.
I think you got the years wrong. New Jersey was re activated in 1982 at Long Beach Naval Shipyard. I was part of the PNSY tiger team that worked on her at that time, Wisconsin and Iowa were mothballed at Philadelphia.
Here is a little tidbit from long ago. During the reactivation work we had to use the heads that already existed onboard. This of rows of dividers over a watering troft like half pipe with just a flip down toilet seat laying across the troft . The troft had constant running water (sea water). The water ran from the one end to the other. The farther up stream you could get was considered preferable. Otherwise you had to watch the turds and paper float past just underneath you. A stupid prank was to sit and wait for fresh meat to come to use the head. Once they were seated and doing their business you would take a big ole wadded up pile of dry toilet paper and light it on fire and drop it in the stream below. The fire would pass underneath the new guy and give him a hot seat scare. This is butt one of many pranks we would get up to. Seasoned Sailors always knew to wait for the top seat upstream. Urinals were another troft with no dividers and no seats. No privacy at all. All this old style gear was yanked out and replaced with more modern accommodations. No more Fire balls.
Is it me or does the inside of New Jersey still look fairly modern? I know we aren't seeing every square foot of her, but she still looks fit to fight. Glorious in her sleep!
She's pretty well kept, but I wouldn't quite call her fit to fight personally. In today's combat environment, even with her modernization in the 80s, she's something akin to bringing a very large knife to a gun fight, and her engines are fairly worn out too. But she's a beautiful piece of our nation's history at sea and we are so lucky to still have her. Props to the Battleship New Jersey team for keeping her around for all to see
@@umad42 actually the engines aren't worn at all. The ships only sailed a total of 18 years. The Battleship Texas sailed for 36 years, and the USS Kitty Hawk sailed for 48 years. In a sense, these engines don't have much mileage on them. Plus they are steam based, it's all turbine based. There isn't much different in terms of nuclear and steam engines, it's just how you power the turbines being turned.
For 1943, The Iowa Battleships had advanced targeting computers, and the best electrical control systems available at the time, with high tech switching that allowed guns to be controlled from multiple places aboard ship... both for flexibility of control, as well as redundancy in case of battle damage. The targeting computers were electromechanical analog design (not electronic or digital) but were still some of the most advanced Range-Keeper design, and still fully capable 40yrs later when BB62 was back in service. They also had multiple ways to generate their electrical power, with duplicate steam turbine generators, and two diesel generators. While most US cities did get electrical power from 1900 to 1940, this is still at a time when over 25% of rural america did not have electricity in their homes. BB62 even had aux power cables that would allow ship crew to re-wire power while underway, to run cables and route electricity if battle damage cut power lines to sections of the ship. New Jersey had more advanced Radar for targeting than was common for other battleships up to that time.
@maximilliancunningham6091 mechanical computers are actually coming back... if you have one job, one calculation... mechanical can actually be faster/ way more energy efficient than transistor based . . It does the job Can't do the job better lol
@@kainhall I was in the Air Force and worked on the weapons control system of the F4-E. It had a electro-mechanical computer and it was rock solid. In the late 70s early 80s they started converting to a more digital computer system. It was not without issues but I assume they got those ironed out eventually. But the electro-mechanicals ones lasted from the first in the early 60s to the mid 80s at least. I got out in 82 so after that I have no idea.
I can't go to sleep without hearing "hi, I'm ryan szimanski, curator for battleship new jersey museum and memorial. Today..." You're the man, Ryan.. I'm gonna come up to the ship from Colorado to see Engine Room 2 for a hug. What I think is forward looking on the ship: adaptability. Crazy that the lady was able to accommodate so many systems over so much time between the 40s and 80s.
Yes absolutely, their fast battleship design was so forward thinking, the fact that they remained in service for over half a century after is a testament to the reliance of their design. They are an incredibly well rounded design with a near perfect combination of Speed, armor and firepower in that they are able to not only defend themselves and take on any contemporary surface combatant but also keep pace with the rest of the fleet and deploy rapidly anywhere in world. Giving them both Punch, Strength and Endurance all in one. They are as such in my opinion the Best Surface combatants ever built and with the right modernizations their design would still hold even to this day. ...You know im even starting to think bringing back one of the Iowas would have been REALLY helpful with the current crisis in the Red Sea. Im sure the houthis would get the message with the roar of a 16" barrelling down them just like we did in Iraq. Certainly with most houthi targets right along the coast the current situation in the Red Sea would be the PERFECT use case for the Iowas incredible direct gunfire capabilities. Certainly far cheaper than the airstrikes currently taking place.
If not the Iowas, then perhaps the 8 inch gun Cruisers, depending upon material condition of their systems and spin up time of the ammunition manufacture. But that is still the same issues involving the Wisconsin in Norfolk, for example, given her location to a major USN Naval yard facility. Just an opinion of an Australian.
@@shanemay3797 16 inch guns were overkill at the time, meant for attacking other battleships. An aircraft carrier could sink one easier. 8 inch cruiser guns might be a lot more practical for shore bombardment and other anti-personnel actions. Even good against tanks. Anything too big for an 8 inch gun could be destroyed by an air strike. Maybe we should make some new cruisers with 8 inch guns. Wouldn't be the dumbest thing. Give them enough armor to laugh at enemy tanks.
NJ is the culmimation of years of knowledge of shipbuilding, power, and many other technologies. by the time the navy laid her down, they had figured out many things: how to do it right . they even gave room for thinking into the future. oorah!
Good points in their favour by Ryan . I addition I think the robustness of their construction meant the hull was still seaworthy long after any modern warship would have succumbed to the elements . They aren't built to survive as these were in WW2 relying on detection and weapons systems . I remember Iowa visiting Portsmouth and she was very impressive , these ships pedigree , history and reputation were also important .
I knew an Iowa sailor from the 80s and 90s. he claimed they were ordered to get to some event somewhere, and went full speed and left her escort frigates and destroyers behind. this was still cold war, and it upset the Russians. cause they always wanted to know where she was. it was the Russian ambassador who spotted her again.
@@duanem.1567it is worth noting in heavier sea states they might have outpaced their escorts. Even modern vessels aren’t immune to the laws of physics and hydrodynamics.
@@duanem.1567 In a sprint in calm seas, yes. In rough weather and over a long distance, the escorts are going to have a real problem keeping up. They'll have to slow down in rough weather. Plus they will run low on fuel at high speed long before that becomes a problem for an Iowa.
Having 2 main battery plots and computers which allowed for much better indirect fire in the days before modern position fixing fave them a big edge over previous classes that weren’t as well equipped. 1 computer and director could track a prominent land feature to accurately locate the ship while the other then did the ballistic calculations to actually lay the guns on a target that couldn’t be seen by any ship sensors. Pretty cool stuff in the analog days. That certainly made them more desirable for reactivation over previous classes.
My grandpa served on an Iowa class. He said there was nothing like it. You could actually feel the ship cutting through the water like the sharpest knife. And if you were brave enough to stand near the edge you would get hit with fresh sprinkles of water from the massive dump you dropped in the toilet. He was a great man.
I was in the Navy (Seabees) but never on a ship. But I think the sheer size had an amazing shock factor to it. Imagine one of these sitting off the coast aiming its guns at you! Back in 1975, I was stationed in San Diego building boat docks at the harbor. The Enterprise was just pulling in and cruised right past us. It was "awe-inspiring" just seeing this behemoth drive by you! I'll bet though, a Battleship would be even more so because of the big heavy guns! I think a good tag-line would be Dirty Harry's "Go ahead, make my day!" painted on the side of a battleship! lol I'm proud as hell being a part of the Navy fraternity!
I was able to watch Captain Seaquist's interview with Drachinifel and found it facinating. While I agree that his statement concerning the full load of the Iowa to be in error, he may have information that we civilians do not have but I believe the full loading of the Iowa's was about 58,000 tons.
Iowa class BB's were great ships. Great main armament, armor protection, loads of very modern flak, firecontrol systems, great speed and what was really especially good about them was that they rolled out in numbers! Did I mention them being very stable firing platforms akin to the KMS Bismarck class of Battleships? Yeah, that too! 😁They were certainly ships for Americans to be proud of. Then and now!
Capt Seaquist's comment about the Iowas being a humanitarian platform was a point. Now we do this with carriers that can take many more tons of stores (and continue to deploy and receive it enroute) and helicopters to do SAR and medivacs. A lot of the world focus on the US Navy as a battle force but it's a rare incident that there is a major natural disaster and we are not one of the first in line to offer aid. It's a moral conscience of America, a commitment to our friends, and a political good will in those places we aren't well respected.
A tradition at least a hundred years old if President Coolidge's response to the Great Kanto Earthquake is anything to go by. (...Yeah, that one wasn't paid back in kind)
Honestly, with about just over 80 coup and coup attempts in the last 120 years, many in democracies, some directed by ExxonMobil/BP Oil in countries that tried to make money from its own oil, I wish the US stepped down from its whole "we've always been the good guy" act. Really hinders present relations.
By the way, this is all widely known worldwide and confirmed by declassified CIA documents. It's very much mainstream international history, so it pains me that people ask for sources because this wasn't part of their high school curriculum. (I'll provide them, of course, though.)
So the Navy should not have helped out during the recent Japanese earthquake, nor the Haitian humanitarian crisis a few years ago, nor the Navy helping to repatriate WWII POW's? Or providing help to the Greeks in the 1950's earthquake or escorting the grain ships to India during the 1960's Perhaps we should have used our Navy as the Soviets used their Army after WWII or even today in Ukraine? Have you read Eddie Harris' book "A Stranger in his own Land?" While not perfect, I think Germany and Japan's aggression in WWII was far worse than the US as the "Bad guy". @@DrVictorVasconcelos
The design of the hull was ahead of its time. The beam was as big as it could be with the width of the original locks on the Panama Canal. The very sleek shape of the bow gives the Iowa's their speed. Much sleeker than other ships of their time. Ryan covered the electrical, propulsion and buoyancy very well. Good job!
That's the thing I would say is still relevant, and it relates to a few of the things Ryan brought up as well, such as speed and deck space (especially when you look at how much space they had for missiles and helicopters while only losing one turret). The Iowas have all that plus they can still fit through the Panama canal. I think that's very forward looking, because the design anticipates our Cold War era need to project force flexibly across the world, as opposed to operating in two very different and largely separate theatres during WWII
Slim Fast. 40 years ahead of the fitness craze. Able to fit through the Panama Canal is Iowa-class only weakness. With greater Beam would increase area for more powerful machinery, deeper lateral/torpedo defense and more deck space for weaponry topside. Slim Fast.
Not really a weakness if it meant access to both oceans. That’s what navies are for. Having large ships that can’t get where they have to go, like Tirpitz, is a bigger weakness.
There are weight or mass critical ships that have a lot of empty space, and there are volume critical ships that are well armored but have little volume within. There's a point where those two graph lines meet. Not my idea. It came from an article in a late 1960's issue of Proceedings that I read back then.
Like you mentioned elsewhere, a design flaw ironically led to the Iowa class getting further improved 16-inch guns that North Carolina and South Dakota didn't have.
Question suggestion for a future video: Could the Navy EVER have swapped out the original steam turbines/boilers/turbo generators etc (for Korea/Vietnam/80's recommissioning)? Or was the original equipment "locked in" forever, once it was installed & the superstructure built over it(?) Keep up the great work & best of luck for a smooth dry-dock 😀
With money and desire, anything is possible. The biggest issues to replacing the engines of the Iowa's is the armored deck is 6" thick over the engineering spaces, and is one of three armored decks. You'd have to cut holes through all that armor to replace the engines and doing so would compromise the effectiveness of that armor to stop the threats it was intended to stop as you can't weld through all six inches of it... at least... not easily.
IIRC there was a proposal to swap out the steam plant for 8x LM2500s in the 1980s, but it was too expensive and time consuming. The deck armor wouldn't be cut through, just removed since it wasn't structural. As for making new armor, Midvale was long gone by the 1980s but the records and some of the old workforce were still out there, and between them and US Steels expertise in nuclear containment vessels (battleship armor essentially, but in cylindrical shape), they'd have no trouble cranking out new armor.
The Iowas were, and still are, BIG! With BIG guns! Let’s face it, we Americans love BIG things! This has been both a boon and a bain. An impressive show of force, but soooo damned expensive.
I would dispute that the Essex Class were to small to operate modern jet aircraft. The last deployment for an Essex was the 1976 USS Oriskany deployment. Her airwing had over 70 aircraft include 24 F8 Crusaders and 36 A7 Corsairs. The Oriskany carried as many jet aircraft in 1976 as a British Implacable Class did piston engine 30 years earlier on a displacement less than the contemporary HMS Ark Royal.
The British got 12 BAC-MDD F-4K Phantom II FG.1s, 14 Blackburn Buccaneer S.2s as strike power with 5 Fairey Gannet (4 AEW & 1 COD) along with 7 Westland Sea King ASW and 2 Westland Wessex SAR aboard Ark Royal in the 1970s
Fat lot of good that is if it gets caught whereas the British Blackburn Buccaneer can go in low and fast making it much harder to hit A 24hr CAP would not be done unless when at war as the fuel expenditure would be seen as expensive
The Essex's were also flexible. All were modernized extensively in the late 40's and '50's with the final configuration including an enclosed bow, an angled flight deck, steam catapults, upgraded arresting gear and an outboard elevator. They ushered in the jet age with the fleet and flew them well into the '70's.
@@Knight6831The A-7 was just as fast (or rather slow, both were subsonic) as the Buccaneer, and adding low to the mix makes you a wonderful target for light AA, as F-105 pilots found out. As for 24 hour CAP capability, I'd rather have it and not need it than need it and not have it.
It is nuts to think how well the Iowa Class adapted to new rolls. They may have been rushed together in WW2, but they proved they were willing to fight time and time again.
All of your points are valid and well taken, but even if not particularly forward looking, the ability to send 24 tons per minute of f**k you to the enemy is what makes an Iowa class battleship so beloved.
I think another critical point is just the fact that the US designed the Iowas with an expectation that they would sustain heavy combat damage during battle but were intended to repairable even if potentially sunk in shallow water. The Germans also did this, but obviously the German surface Navy never approached the capability of the US. The Japanese, by contrast, weren't as concerned about repairability and salvagability. They were expecting to have a single decisive campaign in which the entire fleet of the losing side was going to end up on the bottom of the Pacific. Years later, this engineered consideration for servicability proved monumental in allowing cost-effective upgrades to be introduced even in the heart of the citadel
In some ways we did have other ships perform shore bombardment - the Baltimore and Des Moines 8" heavy cruisers - a 16" round is extreme overkill against most targets. Except because they stayed in commission while the Iowas were in reserve they were worn out by the 70s; so weren't around in the 80s when the Iowas were all brought back. OTOH you'd have had a hard time fitting the nuclear armed tomahawks on the cruisers; and those were a major reason for the Iowas in the 80s.
If you can, take the tour of one or more of these ships. It's fascinating. I've been on the North Carolina the the technology they had at the time is astonishing. They even had analog fire control computers.
While 600 psi boilers don’t sound like much today they were the most advanced boilers among any major navies in WWII and contributed in large degree to the power density of the Iowas’ powerplants. Even the vaunted Germans were unable to match these advancements in high power density combined with reliability.
Having all that open deck space aft for aviation was a big plus. It probably was another factor in the decision to keep them on the books so long. Much better than the Brit solution... which frankly is true about nearly everything regarding the class.
Not exactly backward-looking, but one thing I saw struck me as rather archaic... An old shipmate of mine was on Wisconsin when she pulled into PNSY when I was there on Kitty Hawk so he invited me over for the nickel tour. We were both hole snipes so naturally that's where we spent most of our time. My biggest takeaway as far as old-timey goes was that the gland seal steam pressure to the turbines was controlled by weights on a scale. Hit me in my steampunk feels. On my ships, we had Leslie regulators that automatically controlled the gland seal pressure as opposed to having a guy physically change the weights on a scale.
The only thing that pops up to me as backwards or limiting harkens back to the recent video you did about the powerplants on the ships. That to me is glaring. The ships are fast as a class and are forward thinking, but in all of the power they can produce, the speed they sail, the weapons they can employ, the standard in which it can be upgraded is limited in one big area. The powerplants. In all the things that can be upgraded and were planned to be able to do so, it is the one thing on the ships that as I said, glare out as things that hurt the longevity of the ships. Largely due to their age and there being less and less people alive that can feasibly work them or keep them maintained that know all the little intricacies of each of the Iowas. That document you showed that specified each Ship had it's own operations and limitations based around their powerplants. Maybe people can learn from experiencing the ships, but even still that's a hard road to learn when you don't have replacements in case you mess up. To me, if the engineering took into account them being around for this long, maybe they'd have engineered a solution to be able to dry dock the ship and remove powerplants either from war damage or for upgrades like most other things could be on the ship. I also think the fact they were designed to be able to traverse the Panama Canal also being a notable design advantage. Maybe not a major one, but the fact they can cut down on traversing either major ocean by doing that is kind of a big deal to me, while a Super Carrier would have to sail all the way around the tip of South America.
Don't think it's "forward" thinking but the electro mechanical range and fire control systems on the Iowa even as a back up to modern systems is such a cool design. Way ahead of its time when produced.
Had a relative who was responsible for planning in the Navy Department back in the 80s, he said the Iowas were intended to have their own task forces like a surface action group centered around one or two Iowas also add to it two or one cruisers, at least 4 destroyers, 2-4 Frigates and if possible attack submarine screen. The purpose of the SAG was to lure out any Soviet surface assets like the Kirovs, Slavas or the DDGs into a pitched ship to ship or task force to task force action, also if the Navy wanted to, baiting Soviet attack submarines to attack the formation, while ASW aircraft and helicopters can detect and overwhelm the Soviet submarines trying to attack the formation. the Navy has more than 500 ships back in the 80s and they can spare destroyers, cruisers and frigates to screen the Iowas to complete the Battleship Task force composition, the fact that the Navy can provide screening ships for the Iowas and also provide screens for aircraft carrier task forces was mind boggling, it was surely an overwhelming firepower if there's a naval war against the Soviets. Also the battleships SAG can be seen especially during Beirut crisis and the Gulf War, in the Gulf War the formation was mixed screening ships from other countries. As mentioned in the video, the Iowa SAG can also support amphibious operation or conduct surface bombardment of their own like New Jersey during Vietnam, there were plans to bombard Murmansk harbor, where the Task Force had to dash from GIUK gap through Soviet submarine gauntlet and aircraft with carrier aircraft support and bombard their naval base at Murmansk with Tomahawk missiles.
I don't if we can call it forward-looking but being able to adapt the seaplane launching area to helicopter operations and then to ROV drone operations was definitely a positive factor for longevity.
Their radar cross section. When I was on the Missouri, we would often run with deceptive lighting to appear as a fishing vessel at night, and it was a good decoy, because we only gave off the radar signal of a small fishing boat. The ships are very low to the water, we used to take water on the main deck when we turned, and most of the exposed surfaces are rounded or angled, which directed radar signals in other directions, to make a small return signal to the transmitter. This was unintentional when the ship was designed, but it worked great once radars became popular.
North Carolina class suffered from worse vibration than the Iowas ever did and their upper armoring was never designed to survive against 16 inch guns; it was meant to survive against the guns they were originally designed for; 14 inch guns.
Near the start of the video you mention the speed of the Iowa Class...a good example of why speed was an issue is the USS Texas BB 35. She entered service in 1912. By the 1930s she was already well passed her usefulness in the Navy. It was not her guns but her speed that made her a dinosaur. Her armament was actually still quite impressive even with her 14 inch main batteries. She was forever stuck at 21 knots though. She couldn't keep up with the aircraft carriers and that was a very big deal. She had been a training ship for well over a decade in line to be scrapped by the time 1938 rolled around. Fortunately for the Texas she was maxed at that 21 knots but that was a great speed for merchant fleets. So she was useful again and actually perfect for the role of protecting merchant ships in the Atlantic. She ended up having a nice service record delivering freedom to the Axis Powers of WW2! She was pivotal in North African Landings and then played a role in the Normandy Landings. She finished her career providing fire support in the Pacific and participated in the Battles of Iwo Jima and Okinawa. She earned five battle stars. Not bad for a old gal from put into service before WW1!
They were designed in the same way as Victorian infrastructure in England, by forward thinking engineers who over engineered to cope with demand rather than accountants who look at cost not practically.
To be fair, the fact that nobody has made proper battleships since WWII means that the Iowa's are the defacto state of the art in battleship design. The individual systems may not be, but the whole package is.
As a steam plant engineering type (aka “black gang”), I always love to have the propulsion turbines and turbogenerators complemented. Maybe if the propulsion plant hadn’t had so many problems in the 1980’s she would have been kept in service longer. :-( Another issue that may have contributed to an early end to her 1980’s reactivation was (so I understand) that nobody was very happy with the accuracy of NewJersey’s bombardment of Syrian targets in Lebanon early in the ship’s 1980’s reactivation. Were there any serious efforts at producing a “smart” 16” projectile that could address this?
Toss enough money to defense contractors and you’ll have a gps guided shell in no time! Prove me wrong! 😂😂😂 As for propulsion, the big issue is insulation. Asbestos is the best, but it’s a killer, so you have to treat it right.
We have smart projectiles for our 155 MM howitzers, Ukraine is using them vs Russia right now and they seem to be accurate, with very long range. The thing is, 406 MM is made to defeat the armor on a WWII battleship. It's overkill vs most ground targets but not the best vs stuff like hardened bunkers. It would be more cost effective to use smaller caliber guided ammo for precise attacks on most targets and larger guided missiles / bombs for hardened targets.
@@miguelsuarez738 Thank you for your insights. If my memory is correct, one of the major justifications for reactivating the IOWA’s was to use the 16 in guns against bunkers and similar hardened targets- but they turned out to be not accurate enough to be very effective.
@@miguelsuarez738 a 16" diameter projectile has a few advantages if you can get electronics to survive the initial launch... specifically, you could make smart cluster munitions which could be deployed using those shells.
A all forward main armament might have made the Iowas easier to modify with various radars, missile systems and hangar for helos. But that is probably about it, with the tech available at the time.
One thing the Iowa class could have done to upgrade electrical power and to get rid of a bunch of old heavy equipment could have been to get rid of the 1940's electrical power generation systems and gone with gas turbines. One 1970's LM 2500 (same as used in the Spruance and Kidd class destroyers) would have produced around 20,000 kW of electrical power when paired with a generator. 4 of them would have produced around 80,000 kW's of power.
I personally think the analog fire control computer was one thing that the iowas had that were really a cut above the rest. The fact they didn’t replace them after reactivating it seem like they knew it could still come in handy
The Iowa class BB’s will forever remain mainstays in the USN history in part due to the role that New Jersey’s sister, the Missouri, played in the Japanese surrender. My father flew in B-29’s and on the day of the armistice ceremony McArthur ordered a fly over by all available B-29’s. Dad was a photographer and as his ship flew over the Missouri he leaned over and took a picture of the battleship. With incredible luck he happened to capture the moment the Japanese delegation arrived shipside. I have this photo to this day.
I've always thought that the bow AA gunners on the Iowas must've felt like the loneliest men in the world when the ships were in battle. The pic on this video seems to prove my point. They seem so far removed from the rest of the ship because of how long, yet graceful the bow is.
As a minor quibble, the USN had several capital ships built before the Washington Naval Treaty that could generate much more electrical power than the _Iowa_-class could. Of course, that's because they *needed* to generate lots of electrical power, just to get underway: they had turbo-electric propulsion, which used electric motors, rather than geared turbines, to move the ships. That's clearly not a fair comparison to the _Iowa_-class, which could generate 10,000 kW of electrical power available for ship systems, while steaming at 30+ knots.
4 minor aspects that under certain circumstances could have given them additional usefulness to the Navy well into the 21st century had the Navy chose to keep them in ready status instead of gamble everything on the dismal DDGX / Zumwalt class assuming the NGF role would be: 1--flag facilities (at least 2 of the Iowas had these I believe) which could be upgraded to allow service (at least temporarily) as a modern command ship 2--the number of electrical and mechanical repair shops inside these beasts could allow them to fill in as Tenders for smaller surface ships in forward deployed areas 3--The sheer amount of fuel they can carry allowed them to (before the fleet switched to gas turbines) function as mini-oilers for battlefleets they sailed in, reducing the need for vulnerable fleet oilers to have to get too close to active war zones / reducing the need for ships of the battle fleet to vacate the war zone to meet the oilers. 4--When it comes to the danger of "masses of low end threats" (small air and surface drones, light aircraft, suicide speedboats, etc) attacking strategic choke points these heavily armored ships would be perfect for sea control because such low end threats pose very little danger to these ships due to their massive armor, design to be able to remain operation in the fight even with severe damage, and overall size of ship being able to absorb a lot of energy from attacks that penetrate or avoid the armor. And with small RHIB sized drones towing MCM sonar arrays that can be lowered over the side, these ships can even carry their own screening escort boats to avoid sea mines. To be honest, I think that had the navy not scrapped the land based maintenance and repair facilities for the battleship's armor and 16" guns and ammunition and barrel liner production, I think in the last 20 years the pentagon would have given in to the temptation to return massively upgraded Iowa hulls to service (replace powerplant with modern one using same fuel as rest of fleet, boost power generation 50%, production of planned extreme long range precision rounds for the 16" guns, reduction of topweight via removing armored citadel and remaining 5/38 dual gun turrets and replacing them with smaller 57mm gun turrets, and fitting out with newer strike and air defense systems such as adaptable deck launchers for housing tomahawks, dozens of deck mounted Mk 56 VLS cells for ESSMs, multiple Mk 49 pedestal launchers for RAM missiles, and 4 to 6 block 1B Phalanx CIWS, along with several ODIN weapons on Mk 38 mounts for defense against small drones.
There is probably a video on this already but what is the conning tower and why or why not was it armored? A video on that would be great, also awesome content
You missed how solid the hull is. They were designed to take as big a beating as they could give out. If they were built today with more modern technology and maintained there's no reason reason they can't operate for even longer
Most of the obsolete systems were removed and replaced with more modern equivalents as time went by( time after time). The Iowa's were a very modular design before that concept became a buzz word in ship design. The only real improvement in my opinion, you could make to an Iowa would be to replace the oil fired steam boilers with nuclear reactors. A battleship that did not have to refuel would be incredible. The only negative I can think of is the sheer size of the ship, it would be damn hard to try and hide an Iowa from modern radar and the acoustic signature would be hard to miss on a modern attack submarine. I don't think even modern countermeasures would help much. The design is incredible when you consider what our allies and the axis powers were producing at the time.
I disagree with the notion of the Iowas being considered "super battleships". Yes, they are the second biggest behind Yamato and Musashi, but their characteristics don't mirror what their Japanese counterparts display or even the Montana-class. "Unrestricted battleship" is more like it. They sit at the top of that threshold, follow by HMS Vanguard, Bismarck and Tirpitz, Richelieu and Jean Bart (to an extent). I think the Iowas are in a perfect spot where their reserve of buoyancy, speed characteristics, offensive and defensive capabilities make them pinnacle when it comes to their overall design. Not even Yamato could take that title away from the Iowa-class. There will be no other vessel like the Iowa-class with those kinds of characteristics.
@@HighlyImprobableName They weren't, though. The Iowas were designed under the stipulations of the treaties, just exercising the escalator clauses. The Montanas would have been post-treaty battleships.
@@zoopercoolguy The original design was, but changes were made after 1938 and by their actual commissioning in 42-43 they were more than 3,000 tonnes over the escalator clause limits.
Very well said. In a surface gunnery action, they were in no way equipped to engage the Yamato class. By any other consideration however- and particularly viewed as overall fleet units-, they were far and away the most valuable capital ships ever constructed.
One thing I'll mention that's actually backwards is armored conning towers. They added so much weight and an incident on South Dakota proved they weren't that protective. Not to mention it was more important to protect deck armor and ammo from plunging shells. The other two I'll mention are more so just a shame. Only two members of the class had Westinghouse geared turbines. Also, them using direct drive turbine was an important decision. However, the later standard US battleships members with their turbo electric systems could afford more subdivisions.
I would consider their main batteries to be one why that they were ahead of their time simply because they could hit from father away while maintaining accuracy. Example Yamato’s main batteries could hit from about 20 miles though not that accurately while an Iowa class could hit from about 24 miles while maintaining much higher accuracy while doing almost the same amount of penetration while being able to be reloaded faster and probably more cheaper then a 18.1 inch battery from Yamato could.
1. Range accuracy of the USN Mark 8 Radar Range Keeper- 35 to 40 yards at 20,000- 25,000 yards. 2. Range accuracy of the foretop rangefinder aboard Yamato- 60- 90 yards at 20- 25,000 yards. 3. Range accuracy of the Japanese Type 22 Mod 4 radar in a range assist role- 109 yards. All of the above are more than offset by shell dispersion. 4. Shell dispersion of the Iowa class- 1.9% of range for a nine- gun salvo. 5. Shell dispersion of the Yamato class- 1.3% of range for a nine- gun salvo. Historical performance: 6. None of the Iowa class battleships obtained a main battery hit on any warship of destroyer size or larger in WW2. 7. Off Samar, Yamato obtained 3 first- salvo hits on USS Johnston from just over 20,000 yards. She obtained 1 first- salvo hit on USS Gambier Bay (from a six- gun salvo which was aimed solely by the ship's radar because of a lack of a visual to the target until about a minute after firing) from just under 22,000 yards. She landed 2 shells a few feet alongside USS White Plains from just over 34,000 yards. Neither of them likely struck the ship. One exploded, and the damage was severe enough to force White Plains from front- line service for the remainder of the war. From a surface action standpoint, the Iowa class had two advantages over the Yamato class. 8. A five- knot advantage in speed. 9. Remote Power Control- the ability for the fire control radar to remotely control the ship's main battery and maintain it on target in all conditions. The U.S. Navy never developed tactics to utilize this advantage during the war. Truth matters...
Calling an Iowa-class a super battleship is something I never would've thought of, but it makes a lot of sense the way you described it and when considering other battleships of the era.
Assume that the crew berthing shown at approx 6:50 is aboard New Jersey. The top rack is still exposed to the overhead, Serving aboard USS Forrestal in 1968, berthing was up forward under the foreword catapults. During catapult launches a fine white powder would float down into the crewman sleeping in that top rack. The piping was of course Asbestos covered which with age dried out and was no longer contained I would imagine when the main batteries aboard New Jersey were fired in the 1980's you would have the same result! Signed an Old Shellback PH3. RVAH-12.
I've been watching this too long. Starting to anticipate Ryan's reasoning. The first "forward thinking " that came to me was the extra buoyancy built in allowed for the additon of the extra missile systems and such. You trumped me with the electrical capacity. Do you think that the designers were already planning for the explosion of radars and olther electronics back in the 40's? Luckily solid state electronics meant that the future versions consumed less power than the vacuum tube based electronics of the 40's.
Just speculating here but I figure some of that is margin for growth and a lot of it is updated risk analysis as the nature of combat evolved. 8x 1.25 MW is indeed 10MW gross, but in a vessel designed to lose entire sections, I imagine the original intent was in terms of redundancy. Lost one boiler or engine room and you're down to 7.5 MW. Lose two and that's only 5 MW. If I wanted the ship to have a certain amount of survivability I wouldn't have specced much beyond that. I suspect that as the years grew on and there was less ship-to-ship direct combat, the US Navy re-evaluated those requirements and upgraded the amount of expected power as less redundancy would be necessary. Plus you can always "not run stuff". They took out some vacuum tube stuff but the old power-hungry fire control systems are still there. The motors inhale much more power than a handful of integrated circuits! Plus they did refit from incandescent bulbs to fluorescent lighting which I'm sure helped quite a bit.
Iowa class on the surface seems to just simply be a beefed up South Dakota. However, the length in hull resulted in less cramped living conditions. While that would be a lesser issue for South Dakota these days due to smaller crews, there's plenty of other things that come with the more restricted interior of South Dakota class; including less flexibility for plumbing and septic systems. South Dakota and Iowa class seem like they initially have the same targeting computer, but Iowa just has an extra advantage. There's also the slightly deeper draft for South Dakota that makes docking less convenient enough for it to be noticed. The skegs being outboard for South Dakota instead of being inboard like with North Carolina and Iowa. This means the propulsion shafts were in the skegs. South Dakota had the outboard skegs to help with the short hull, but Iowas had no need for that. Not to mention it seems like inboard skegs have better torpedo protection. Also, as you said when talking about Iowa vs South Dakota engine rooms in an older video; Iowa was able to have more subdivisions and Ship's Service Turbine Generators (SSTGs). Not to mention also potentially a more efficient system to dispel non-condensable gasses from boiler feed water. Improved resilience with what the engine rooms can take was no doubt important to consider for the Cold War.
In addition to the comments made in this video, former SECNAV John Lehman often referred to the IOWA's survivability as a main reason to modernize and reactivate battleship NEW JERSEY and her 3 sister battleships in the 1980's. If the IOWA's participated during the Falkland Islands war, the Exocet missiles that sunk several of her Majesty's warships would have little effect against an IOWA's armor protection that measures up to 17.5 inches thick. Captain William F. Fogarty, New Jersey's CO when recommissioned in December 1982 when asked about the damage caused by an Exocet missile attack said, "I would do exactly what Admiral Halsey would have said. "Sweepers Man Your Brooms"!
Have you done any videos on pumping systems on the ship? I work at Warren Pumps and I know we had a laundry list of pumps on the USS Massachusetts and many others but not sure about the Iowa class. Main circulator was a common application for us, any chance you have this information?
The guns accuracy is very forward lookijg for me,because the time in the 80s redeployed,the accuracy is so goood,that they decided to not replace that by modernisation
I think in the 80s the gun controls would still have been fairly advanced, but if they were rebuilt today the entire gun targeting system would have to be replaced
The military did a study on this very thing in the 80's and 90's and determined that even with improved computing power, the accuracy of the Iowa's fire control computers was high enough to not justify the cost of removing the original electro-mechanical computers. The only thing they did was they added da doppler radar to measure the speed of the shell as it went down range to adjust follow on shots with better velocity data. I imagine that plotting against land based targets would improve with higher GPS accuracy, but actually making the ship more accurate would require significant advances in powder designs and GPS guidance...
Great vid. Question Ryan: You mention fastest speed, which, to a cube function, indicates the most horsepower for direct propulsion. And you state the Iowa's have the most electrical generation of any BB. How much total combined power from the engineering plant, propulsive, electrical (in terms of HP), other auxiliary power (steam driven mechanisms other than main propulsion and turbo generators), etc, did the Iowa's have? How does that compare to not only its peer group in terms of total power, but to a modern Destroyer, Cruiser and even CV (to the best publicly available info)?
How does water get into and out of the ballast tanks? You talked about how the tanks line the hull and the keel. That is a really long distance. Is it pushed out with compressed air? Pumped out? Are there valves in the hull to blow the water out, like on a submarine?
In the modern day, we know how important is to have your ships to generate enough electricity for newer tech. We can look at that using the Arleigh Burke-class as example, comparing the Flight I to the newest Flight III, which maxed out the power generation of the Burkes. They're still very good ships, but they can no longer be upgraded, so the DDG(X) program has the mission of succeding them. The Nimitz-class supercarriers also have their power generation reaching their limit, and then, the Ford-class has twice(?) the power generation, and currently uses, I think, 30% of their power generation, and the remaining is reserved for the new tech that's about to come in the 60+ years they are expect to be in service.
