Iowa (BB 61) - Naval Cruise Book

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THE STORY OF THE BIG STICK Twenty four years out of commis- sioned service had not been kind to the mothballed battleship. Once considered the mightiest warship afloat, she sat lifelessly at her mooring in Philadelphia, with sistership WISCONSIN alongside. Her 16 inch guns had been silent for more than two decades; her teak wood deck was rotting in places. A thick layer of dust covered the spaces below decks. Solidly boar ded bridge windows concealed out dated equipment. It was a disaster, said Captain Gerald E. Gneckow, commanding officer, recalling the first time he saw his new ship. F or the officers, crew and civilians who gave IOWA back to the fleet, the effort was almost superhuman — 18 months of 18-20 hour working days, often seven days a week. Their work culminated at 11:39 a.m. on April 28, 1984 when Vice President Bush placed IOWA in commis- sion. A crowd of 15,000 cheered as the Battleship came alive for the third time in her career. More than four decades earlier, 30,000 shipyard workers had gathered at the New York Navy Yard to witness lOWA ' s launching. I christen thee IOWA said Mrs. Henry A. Wallace, wife of the vice president and sponsor of the ship, as she swung a metal encased champagne bottle against the ship ' s bulbous bow. May God guard the IOWA and all who sail in her. With those words, the simple wartime ceremony ended, as IOWA slid down the ways and into the East River. Frank Knox, then Secretary of the Navy, proclaimed the namesake of her class the greatest ship ever launched by the American nation. With the possible exception of Japan ' s YAMATO and MUSASHI battleships, which the IOWA class was designed to encounter, she was without question the most powerful warship in history. Working day and night, it took thousands of men three years to build her at an original cost of $110 million. Nearly the length of three football fields, the 887 foot, 55,000 ton behemoth carried nine 16-inch guns (capable of firing a shell the weight of a Cadillac well over 20 miles), twenty 5-inch guns, and twenty 40mm anti aircraft guns. In places, her steel plated armor was more than 16 inches thick. A crew of 2,800 sailed her at speeds well in excess of 30 knots. Commissioned on Washington ' s birthday in 1943, IOWA embarked on her shakedown cruise just two days later with a crew who, for the most part, had just enlisted for the war effort and had never been to sea before. Because of the war, she received her first orders just three months later. On August 27, 1943, IOWA set for Argentia, Newfoundland, and the Tirpitz Watch , which was designed to keep that feared German battleship penned up in Norway, where she reportedly awaited the chance to pounce on Allied commerce. 4 In the fall of that same year, IOWA was given perhaps the most distinguished assignment in her 13 years of commissioned service. She was selected to carry President Roosevelt from the United States to Mers- el-Kebir, North Africa, the first leg of his trip to the Teheran conference with Churchill and Stalin. Because of the secrecy of the mission, the President ordered that no honors were to be rendered him. And so on November 13, 1943, IOWA slipped out of Hampton Roads, Virginia, with the Commander-in-Chief, his special advisor, the Joint Chiefs of Staff, and 76 of their party. A white porcelain bathtub, the only one on any US Navy ship, had been installed in the Captain ' s cabin for the President, who suffered from infantile paralysis. It remains in place today. At lOWA ' s helm was Capt. John McCrea, former aide to President Roosevelt when he was Undersecretary of the Navy. IOWA was forced to return to sea during the Teheran conference, because of the constant threat from German glider bombs. On November 27, 1943, while enroute to Bahia, Brazil, she crossed the equator for the first time, welcoming King Neptune on board and conducting her first shellback ceremony. R ' eturning to North Africa via Freetown and Dakar, IOWA again embarked President Roosevelt, to return him to the United States. He was taken aboard from LA GAZELLE, a French destroyer, by use of a special boatswain ' s chair designed and made under the supervision of lOWA ' s chief boatswain. As he was about to leave IOWA at the mouth of the Potomac on a cold and raw December morning, he paused to thank the officers and crew who had carried him safely to North Africa and back. By this time, IOWA had steamed 16,161 miles at an average speed of 22.5 knots — a speed so great that relays of destroyers had been required to screen her.

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The crest for the third era of active service was designed by John Giss of Iowa. Symbolically, the outside circle is rendered in red, white and blue to represent the patriotic mission of the USS IOWA in defense of the United States of America. The motto Our Liberties We prize, Our Rights We Will Maintain is the motto of the state of Iowa and was used on the ship ' s 1943 crest. The World War II drawing of BB-61 in camouflage is used as a reminder of past glory and victory and denotes vigilance. The hawk represents strength and speed in response to enemy acts of aggression. The hawk is shown returning the numbers 61 to the ship ' s bow as she is once again placed in service to her country. The two stars beneath the ship are representative of her two previous periods of service and of operations in both the East and West Hemispheres. The star rising in the blue field of the sky represents the beginning of her third era of service and high ideals and standards set by the ship ' s crew. The dates 1943 and 1984 commemorate the ship ' s original commissioning and her most recent commissioning.

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Unfortunately, one of those destroyers, W. D. PORTER, was the cause of what Capt. McCrea would later call in his official report the only untoward incident of the trip. It occurred on the second day, while the President and his party were topside observing anti-aircraft demonstrations. PORTER was making practice torpedo runs on IOWA when a live torpedo was accidently fired directly at the Battleship. PORTER immediately signalled torpedo coming your way , followed by torpedo is mine. I am investigating. As IOWA came to full speed and turned hard toward PORTER, the torpedo ' s wake could be seen 1,000 yards off the starboard quarter. Two weeks later, IOWA was ordered to support an attack on the Marshall Islands in the Pacific theater of the war. Designed to transit the 110 foot wide Panama canal with less than a foot of clearance on either side, IOWA and her sister ship NEW JERSEY scraped their way through the canal early in 1944, as much to the chagrin of their respective deck departments then as in 1984, when both ships transited the canal on their way to Central America. The two battleships reached the Pacific in time to support the bombardment of Majero and Kwajalein prior to the landing of General H. M. Howlin ' Mad Smith and his Marines. In late February, 1944, IOWA was assigned to Task Force 58 under the renowned Vice Admiral Raymond Spruance, who had served in the first Battleship IOWA (BB-4) in 1906-07. The ensuing attack on Truk by the carrier task force resulted in 265 enemy aircraft destroyed and the sinking of the cruiser KATORI and the destroyer MAIKAZE. lOWA ' s first month in the Pacific concluded with strikes against Saipan, Tinian, Rota, and Guam in the Marianas. On March 18, 1944, IOWA joined a task force of six battleships and a fast carrier for an attack on Japa- nese shipping near Mill Atoll. Flying the flag of Rear Admiral Willis Lee, IOWA and the special task force sent several enemy ships to the bottom with no American losses. IOWA, however, was struck by two 153mm Japa nese shells. The first detonated on the port side at frame 134, tearing a jagged 30 x 50 inch hole in her side starting 12 inches below deck level; the second exploded on impact on the left side of turret two about 18 inches above the barbette, causing minor damage to the turret range finder. The worst damage IOWA was to sustain throughout all her fierce fighting in the war was negligible, and there were only two minor personnel injuries. During the next two months, IOWA supported British landings at Aitape, Humboldt Bay, and New Guinea, protected carriers operating in those regions, and fulfilled a role that one journalist, writing in 1983, called typical. Unfortunately, he wrote, American battleships were like a blocking back in a football game — they were always the playmakers but never the heroes. By June, 1944, Task Force 58 had grown to include not only IOWA but six other battleships, fifteen carriers, twenty one cruisers, sixty nine destroyers, and many other ships. The primary cause of Japanese losses, it was obvious to the increasingly desperate Imperial Navy that Task Force 58 had to be destroyed. On June 19, 1944, the Japanese attacked the American Task Force, with a four section air strike. When the Great Marianas Turkey Shoot was over, the U.S. Navy ' s losses totaled 30 planes vs. 346 for the Jananese. Left with barely three carriers and 100 operable aircraft, Marianas represented the end of any real hope for a Japanese naval victory, although Japan ' s battleships and most of her cruiser force had not shared in the fate of the As the Battleship ' s helm passed to Captain Allen Rockwell McCann, IOWA was operating with Admiral Halsey ' s Third Fleet and Admiral Spruance ' s Fifth Fleet, leading attacks against Tinian, New Guinea and the Caroline Islands. In October, 1944, in support of amphibious landings in the Philippines, the Navy positioned one task force in southern Leyte Gulf, and another, under Admiral Halsey, and including both IOWA and NEW JERSEY, at the San Bernadino Straits. Both task forces were initially ordered to assume a defensive posture. Historians would later refer to Leyte Gulf as the location of the last great ship to ship battle. The Japanese divided their forces into three fleets, the Northern, Southern and Central Forces. The Northern Force was to sail north of Leyte Gulf and act as a decoy to lure IOWA and NEW JERSEY away from their positions, leaving the Central and Southern forces, with the YAMATO and MUSASHI, free to attack the remainder of the U. S. fleet in a pincher movement. But the Japaneses plan failed disastrously when the decoy Northern Force went unseen but the Central Force was spotted and mauled, including the sinking of the MUSASHI. Admiral Thomas Kinkaid presumed that the San Bernadino Straits were protected by IOWA, so he continued the amphibious landings. However, by this time, the decoy Japanese force had been discovered and was being pursued, when the Central Force, including YAMATO, sailed unmolested into Leyte Gulf and attacked the small collection of destroyers and escorts there. Two desperate messages were sent to Admiral Halsey, urging him to return with IOWA, but the second was misinterpreted to read Where is Task Force 23. The World Wonders. Halsey read this as an insult, and refused to return his task force until the battle had been miraculously won by the undergunned Americans. IOWA had been denied a battle with YAMATO, the very ship she was designed to destroy, and only Halsey ' s public image saved him from a court martial. Shortly after Leyte Gulf, IOWA steamed home under a new skipper, J. J. Holloway. She received a warm welcome in San Francisco and was overhauled at the shipyard at Hunter ' s Point, returning to sea in March, 1945, for a shakedown and training cruise off San Pedro.