16 September 2011
NEWSLETTER
OUR 13TH
SHERATON NORFOLK WATERSIDE HOTEL
NORFOLK, VIRGINIA
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Please keep your email address up to
date with LaDonna
even if you don’t want it posted online.
Please contact LaDonna
Bradshaw, bb64members@aol.com. Or (601)
693-4614
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INOTICE
If you are a member and have not received your
August Badger, please send an email to LaDonna
Bradshaw,
Bb64members@aol.com She has several Badgers that were returned by
the post office.
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FC3 FA Division |
1944-1945 |
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USS IOWA BB-61 NEWS
USS Iowa bound for Los
Angeles
World War II battleship to become a museum
By SHAYA TAYEFE MOHAJER Associated Press
5:45 a.m. EDT,
September 11, 2011
LOS ANGELES - The USS Iowa - the last
surviving World War II battleship without a home - will head to the Port of Los
Angeles to stand as a permanent museum and memorial to battleships.
The nonprofit Pacific Battleship Center, which has been working to bring the
ship to Los Angeles, beat out the San Francisco Bay area city of Vallejo. The
Navy’s decision also comes six years after the San Francisco Board of
Supervisors voted against making a public display of the ship in that city,
citing local opposition to the Iraq war and the military’s stance on gays,
among other things.
The nearly 900-foot battleship must be rehabilitated in
The Iowa’s new home will offer 4½ acres of parking space in North America’s
busiest seaport, adjacent to the World Cruise Center, where cruise ships dock
and flocks of tourists could tour the Iowa.
“Our focus for our museum will be on the history of the battleships, not only
the Iowa being the ultimate in design, but we’ll be focusing from the very
beginnings” of the massive vessels, Kent said.
President Franklin Roosevelt traveled home aboard the USS Iowa after the 1943
Tehran conference of al\lied leaders, where he met with Soviet leader Joseph
Stalin and British Prime Minister Winston Churchill to plan war strategies
against Nazi Germany.
The 45,000-ton ship, which towers 15 stories above the waterline, engaged in
battles in the Pacific theater during World War II and entered Tokyo Bay with
the occupation forces in 1945 where it served as Admiral William F. Halsey’s
flagship for the surrender ceremony. The battleship later served off Korea’s
eastern shores during that conflict.
In 1989, the USS Iowa suffered one of the nation’s deadliest military accidents
after 47 sailors were killed in an explosion during a training exercise. Before
being decommissioned in 1990, it served as an escort for oil tankers in the
Persian Gulf.
The Iowa was towed to San Francisco from Rhode Island in 2001, after Sen.
Dianne Feinstein, D-Calif., helped secure $3 million to bring it to San
Francisco in hopes of making it a tourist attraction at Fisherman’s Wharf. Four
years later, Feinstein, a former San Francisco mayor, called the city’s
supervisors’ 8-3 vote against the idea a “very petty decision.”
The Iowa’s sister boats are already serving as museums: The USS Missouri is
docked at Pearl Harbor in Hawaii, the USS Wisconsin is docked in Norfolk, Va.,
and the USS New Jersey is docked in the state it is named for.
The Iowa and the Wisconsin will be maintained to avoid rust and other mechanical
problems in the unlikely event the ships are ever needed in war, Kent said.
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FACEBOOK INFORMATION
If you are a Facbook
member, you may want to check out the following two Facebook
pages;
I Served on USS Wisconsin BB-64 USS Wisconsin (BB-64)
Reunion 2012
Neither of these two pages are
association pages. Pages were started by former crew members wanting to
rekindle shipboard friendship.
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