Big 'uns: Mark & Bob's most excellent USS Iowa Adventure

Kafene and I went to the USS Iowa today in San Pedro harbor. Yes, the USS Iowa that we (LA) stole from you hippies up in No Cal :tongueout: Anyways, it was quite an amazing experience to see what I've only read about in books and on tv/video. It is truly awesome to see how it is constructed and how they modernized it with new weaponry to keep it state of the art in terms of offensive and defensive weapons. It was pretty interesting to see too on the inside that the height of the beams was about 6 feet. Mark and I had no need to walk crouched or duck at all :) The guns are amazing to stand next to. I can't imagine being on the receiving end of those 16" shells. The smaller anti-aircraft guns were neat to see as well. They upgraded the battleship with CIWS, aka R2D2 or Phalanx gatling guns to shoot down sea skimming missiles. At the end of the ship were replicas of the Tomahawk cruise missile boxes (4 per).

http://farm9.staticflickr.com/8204/8...5e31023661.jpg

I've uploaded most of the pics onto my Flickr page here: http://www.flickr.com/photos/sizzler...7632064380496/

It's definitely worth going. Tix is $18 + $1.00/hr for parking. If you live in So Cal and have been to the Intrepid museum down in San Diego, you must come up to San Pedro and visit the USS Iowa.

That looks like a lot of fun. I could spend all day on that boat just looking around. Thanks for sharing.

mike,

the best part is that many of the boat's sections are still under restoration and haven't opened. that'll make the next visit interesting as well :)

What day can I come down and give those guns a try?

I love military ships. I've been on deck of a few for tours and such. (can't remember the names, it's been a while)

My friend works and lives on the ship. He is restoring the decks.

yah we asked one of the guides who spent a summer as a reserve on the ship and he said that the wood is not the original (1940s). Many generations of replacement wood. right now the majority of the deck is covered with nailed down 1/2" ply.

I floated by it the other day.

nice, ken! hope to see you guys again soon