USS Iowa Moving to Los Angeles, CA as Museum

[SlaterDoc]

Any port other than Brownsville, TX will do! The goal in any case is to keep her alive and teaching and to keep alive the service and sacrifice of the men that served on her!

However, I just wish more common sense would go into how and where they berth the museum ships. The one biggest thing that always comes up to bite them in the kiester is hull maintenance down the road! Every situation where possible should include combining a museum ship with a "to be decom'd" dry dock! There is more than one on Mare Island. I believe there are a couple in Long Beach as well! They should slip the ship in, with keel blocks already in place. By maintaining the dry dock as well as the ship, when the times comes all they need to do is drain the thing!

An excellent example is the Olympia in PA. She should be brought down to the Wash. Navy Yard, pulled into the now flooded old dry dock, close it up and fill it with sand! No more worry about sinking!

If you survey all the museum ships in the country, you will be amazed at how many have a defunct dry dock slip near by!

[Vahe Demirjian]

Images from my visit to the USS Iowa battleship museum in Long Beach harbor on August 14, 2021:

[River Rat 1]

When it was at Richmond when it got pulled out of the moth ball fleet were they did work on it before getting towed to Long Beach to become a museum. They were asking for volunteers to work on it I just retired since I was a boatswain mate when in the Navy, I knew how to chip paint and to paint was bored with nothing to do so volunteered I help paint the flight deck and got to put the bloomers on the 16-inch guns you get on the16-inch gun barrel and sit on it and put these metal hoops on them were the cover goes over and gets bolted down. Even got to put on the tow cables for the tow. Use to volunteer on that liberty ship in the bay area. So, if you live in the area volunteer on one of them you learn history and get to go to places on the ship tourist can't go to. Live in Montana now so too far to volunteer now. They just had a reunion dinner in the bay area for the Iowa volunteers but to far to drive being in Montana.