Iowa (BB 61) - Naval Cruise Book

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OTHER IOWA iS fn-his BB 61 is the fourth Iowa. The Hrst was a 3200 ton gunboat which served following the Civil War The second was BB-4. She was an 11,000 ton battleship armed with 12 inch guns This Iowa fought the Span- ish Fleet in Cuba during the Spanish American War These photos show BB-4 and some of her crew when she was an active front line ship

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IOWA 'S HIS TOR Y ERITAGE USS Iowa has seen three commissionings now. The first, at the Brooklyn Naval Shipyard in 1943 was undoubtedly the most exciting. There was an im- mediate mission at hand. An urgency was present at the height of WWII that first crew and those who built her will never forget. Her first call to serve lasted just six years. Her second commissioning came two years later. Answering another urgent call to protect freedom in Korea, far from her retirement pier in San Fransisco Bay. From Korean coastal waters she denied the ene- my railways, highways and ridge tops while saving the lives of pilots by taking out targets heavily fortified against air attack. A sense of urgency was also attached to Iowa's third commissioning, 41 years after the first one. A planned 27 month reactivation was pushed ahead to make her ready nine months early to relieve her sister, New Jersey, who was on an extended Shakedown cruise in the Mediterranean. To be commissioned three times in 44 years gives a ship a special place in the minds of her crewmembers. It's what could be called an Instant Heritage. How else could you describe being new and old', simultaneously? Iowa's third commissioning brought about all the pomp and circumstance traditional to any newly built ship. Yet her heritage and already been established twice. Evidence of this was the attendance of so many Iowa veterans at her third commissioning. Less than a year later many of these veterans would see Iowa again when they attended their reunion in our homeport of Norfolk. The day the vets visited us, two former com- manding officers fnow retired admiralsj and the wife of another former C0 were aboard. It was a special privilege for her new sailors to listen to stories of the old Iowa and be complimented on keeping her in good shape for sharing the loss of a vet's former work- space by the creation of a new one during the reactivationj. It was the time for sailors who considered them- selves in many ways veterans Cusj to really hear what Iowa was like when she was home to a thousand more sailors land there are those of us now who say we're crowdedj. Imagine being a flagship with an admiral and five or six staff captains embarked year round. The following pages reveal an Iowa heritage that goes back to the l800's. It is a heritage of sailors who went to sea in ships designed to go in harm's way.

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