♪♪ Battleships are the pinnacle of naval might.

The Iowa Class battleships are the biggest battleships that the United States Navy ever put out to sea.

I hereby assume command of the USS Iowa.

I love this ship, even though the worst time I had in the Navy was on this ship.

The ship was the site of one of the largest peacetime loss of life accidents.

(explosions) ♪♪ Is Iowa a World War II story?

Is it a Korea story?

Is it a 1980s story?

Is it a new museum story?

Is it the story of April 19th?

And the answer is yes, it is all of those.

It is the quintessential surface warrior, the last of the best.

♪♪ ♪♪ Funding for this program was provided by Friends, the Iowa PBS Foundation, as well as generations of families and friends who feel passionate about the programs they watch on Iowa PBS.

Narrator: In the mid-1930s, the United States drew up plans for a brand new battleship.

With France, Italy and Japan abandoning an international treaty limiting the development of capital warships, the United States refused to be left behind.

The U.S. Navy's plan was to build the fastest capital ships on the planet.

Traveling at 33 knots, these battlewagons would be equipped with nine, 16-inch, 50 caliber guns firing armor-piercing shells capable of flying nearly 23 miles with extreme accuracy.

These ships would also include cutting edge analog computer technology for guidance and weapons calibration, accommodations for 2,500 sailors and heavy armor designed to withstand shelling from the most deadly ships on the high seas.

This brand new class of dreadnoughts would become the flagship of the U.S. Navy and they would be called the Iowa Class battleship.

Keith Nitka: Battleships are the pinnacle of naval might.

And the Iowa Class battleships are the biggest battleships that the United States Navy ever put out to sea, both in length and height.

♪♪ Narrator: In total, the Navy planned for six new battleships, the USS Iowa, New Jersey, Missouri, Wisconsin, Illinois and Kentucky.

However, while plans were finalized in 1939, the Illinois and the Kentucky were scrapped mid-build as naval warfare was beginning to change.

Keith Nitka: Naval Doctrine was ships of the line.

They get in line, they get in formation and then, as archaic as it sounds, I have my Navy, you have your Navy, we're going to pass each other and whoever is still floating when the smoke clears is the winner of that battle.

So if you have bigger guns, you have heavy armor, you're able to withstand a lot of beating, you're able to give it out as well, chances are you're going to survive at the end of that battle.

The aircraft carrier changed all that.

Narrator: Through World War I, naval cannon fire was the most deadly weapon of war.

But by 1940, warplanes took their place.

To the United States, nothing made this more clear than the December 7, 1941 Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor.

Under construction for over a year when the Japanese attacked, that single event recharted the course of Iowa Class battleships forever.

Keith Nitka: After the attack on Pearl Harbor and Naval Doctrine had switched from battleships duking it out to aircraft carriers carrying their aircraft.

When an aircraft carrier is in flight ops and she's doing 32 knots, there wasn't anything battleship wise in the fleet that could keep up with her to protect her during flight ops until the Iowa Class came along.

So the Iowa Class was designed to fit one role, but it turned out to be a better fit for a different role in protecting the aircraft carriers during flight ops.

♪♪ Dave Canfield: So, we always refer to this as the money shot.

This is the business end of the battleship, the front end of turrets one and two.

This is what projects power.

We used to say that when a battleship arrives in a port it provides presence if nothing else.

When you park this off of somebody's shore and then suggest that they behave a certain way they are usually pretty eager to accommodate.

In 2012, I was standing on the deck of the ship when it was pulled into Berth 87 here in the Port of Los Angeles and it opened as a museum.

And the mixture of emotions was insane.

My story about USS Iowa starts in 1987.

I desperately wanted a battleship, I wanted a piece of history and Reagan was commissioning battleships, I knew that I wanted a battleship.

I got my dream sheet and for the class of ship I put battleship, battleship, battleship, because I just wanted a battleship.

I got my orders, said USS Iowa, BB-61.

I was like, yes!

I loved being at sea.

And so we would go up all the way forward, we used to call it sitting on the front porch, we'd go up to the catwalk and you could lean forward to where you couldn't see the wake and you'd lose the horizon with the reflection of the stars in the glass water and it just felt like you were hanging in space.

I loved that.

♪♪ ♪♪ The mightiest battleship ever built, the USS Iowa.

She displaces 45,000 tons, 10,000 tons more than Uncle Sam's next largest warship.

The first lady attended this wartime launching.

The Iowa is sponsored by Iowa born Mrs. Henry A. Wallace, wife of the Vice President.

Most details of the $85 million Iowa's armament are secret, but it has been announced that her main battery will consist of 16-inch guns.

♪♪ ♪♪ Captain John McCrea: I'll now read my orders to command this ship.

Navy Department, from the Chief of Naval Personnel, the Captain John L. McCrea, naval aide to the President of the United States, subject change of duty.

When directed by the President of the United States on or about 20 January, 1943, you will regard yourself detached from duty as naval aide to the President of the United States.

I hereby assume command of the USS Iowa.

(applause) I now present at this time, Secretary Knox.

Frank Knox: I suppose you don't realize it, but I'd like to remind you that you officers and men are probably the object of envy to most of the men in the United States Navy and you young men who will make up the crew are the object of envy to all the young men of America, almost every one of whom would like to stand in your shoes.

Remember, that it is with that kind of courage and that indomitable spirit that has animated the American Army and Navy from its beginning.

And it is that spirit and that type of courage that gave us this God blessed country for which we're all today ready if need be to die.

♪♪ Narrator: The service history of the USS Iowa BB-61, began in the winter of 1943, after the United States had already committed the full force of its military might to the allied forces.

She has been called The Big Stick because of President Theodore Roosevelt's description of his foreign policy, speak softly and carry a big stick.

With the Iowa set to play a key role in U.S. military history, The Big Stick was ready to stop speaking softly.

David Way: Her first assignment was to go off the coast of Newfoundland and she was guarding against the breakout of the Nazi Germany battleship Tirpitz, which was the sister ship to the infamous Bismarck.

She was only there for a couple of months, then came back to the East Coast, was specially fitted with some elevators for a special passenger, and of course that was President Roosevelt.

And he, along with his war cabinet staff, came on Iowa kind of acting as the Air Force One of the day, took a very dangerous crossing across the South Atlantic to Mers El Kébir in North Africa to attend the Cairo Conference but mainly the Tehran Conference.

♪♪ David Way: We know on board Iowa that the war cabinet staff, along with President Roosevelt, made the final plans for presentation to the allies, namely Churchill and Stalin, to get their approval for the second front, the Normandy invasion.

♪♪ Narrator: Known as The Battleship of Presidents, the Iowa was modified to accommodate President Franklin Roosevelt.

On the second deck of the ship, the Captain's state room became the President's personal quarters.

A private bathtub also was installed, something unheard of on warships.

After all of the modifications, President Roosevelt only boarded the Iowa for two separate excursions, his voyage to Africa for the announcement of plans for the June 1944 D-Day invasion and his return.

However, before he departed U.S. waters, his first experience aboard the ship was a near fatal catastrophe.

David Way: So this was also considered top secret for 15 years after the incident took place in 1943.

Iowa was traveling across the South Atlantic.

They would normally have three destroyers.

They would have to rotate back and forth because they couldn't carry enough fuel.

Many of the warships in World War II at this point in time were brand new, they had brand new crews on board that were very green.

So, President Roosevelt was out on the deck kind of in his wheelchair.

And the porter came alongside to do a simulated torpedo attack.

And so they swung out the torpedo tubes.

Somebody had left the primer, the firing primer in there, they hit the primer, the firing mechanism, and a live torpedo shot out.

♪♪ David Way: They tried to maintain radio silence and the Willie D. Porter, as she was called, tried to flash over a signal lamp, like you have a live torpedo heading your way.

So while this was taking place President Roosevelt thought, oh this is great, entertaining, and he asked the Secret Service people to wheel him up to the rail area so he could watch what was taking place.

Meanwhile, Iowa aimed all her guns on the porter, they thought maybe it was an assassination attempt.

Well, by this time on Iowa's bridge they did spot the torpedo, they called general quarters.

They sped up and turned into the torpedo and the turbulence that was generated from the increase in speed, the torpedo hit that and exploded.

So that didn't go over too well.

♪♪ Admiral Bill Halsey's gigantic third steams at full strength through Japanese home waters on a mission of destiny.

Narrator: Following its service with President Roosevelt, USS Iowa was sent to the Pacific Theater in January of 1944.

Almost immediately, the Iowa started bombarding Japanese-held shores and naval bases, taking her first damage from small shells hitting turret two, causing no serious harm.

While she was routinely used for landing support, the Iowa's primary role remained protecting aircraft carriers.

U.S. and British warships fired some 2,000 tons of shells into the coastal area northeast of Tokyo.

(explosions) John Harris: And you fired those nine guns and the ship goes like this.

She actually moved sideways.

And I never believed this.

That's how powerful it is.

Phil Heine: We very seldom ever got shot at simply because they were afraid of the retaliation of what the Iowa could do.

Not only did we have big 16-inch on there, but we had a whole mess of 5-inch and 40 millimeters that at a mile and a half off shore could have devastated anyone.

Narrator: The main armament of the Iowa Class Big Stick turrets was a 16-inch diameter, 2,700 pound armor-piercing shell.

It was designed to break through 30 feet of reinforced concrete or 18 inches of armor.

Basically, if the Iowa were to meet any enemy warships, it would have little difficulty sinking them.

David Canfield: This is known as the powder train.

This is what it looks like inside the barrel just prior to shooting.

We have a BLMP round here, a blank load and plug round.

This is a practice round filled with concrete.

Behind it we have six dummy bags, so the 660 pounds of powder will move this 300 pound wrect allowing us to put it on target up to 23 miles away.

John Harris: I'm going back on you remember 40 years, 40 years.

We're sailing down and off on the port or starboard, I don't recall, there's a small ship, there was a smaller ship off on our side and we activate the guns and this thing didn't sink, it disintegrated.

Do you recall that?

It was an ammunition ship and when it came down there wasn't hardly anything left on the water.

♪♪ Narrator: By mid-April 1945, the Iowa arrived in Okinawa Bay.

For the next four months it would be used for daily shelling of the Japanese coastline.

But, the Iowa Class battleships were not the biggest guns on the water.

David Way: The two nemesis of the Iowa Class were the Yamato and Musashi.

They had 18-inch guns.

But the Yamato and Musashi, they didn't have as great as fire control systems as the American Navy did.

They had greater armor and they were a bit slower.

They never did arrive at the point where they went head-to-head, gun-to-gun.

And what ended up sinking the Yamato and Musashi was airpower.

They were just overwhelmed with aircrafts, torpedos and bombs.

(explosions) Narrator: From January 1944 to August 1945, Iowa took part in numerous battles and bombardments, even firing rounds in the days following the nuclear strikes on Hiroshima and Nagasaki.

On August 14th, the Japanese surrendered and the war was over.

President Harry Truman personally selected the battleship USS Missouri BB-63 as the stage for the signing of the Japanese surrender documents.

On August 14th, Japan surrendered and early in September 1945 in Tokyo Bay, the United States Battleship Missouri was the scene of the signing of the unconditional surrender terms.

On the deck of the huge battleship, General Douglas MacArthur expressed the hope of the people all over the world.

General Douglas MacArthur: It is my earnest hope and indeed the hope of all mankind that from this solemn occasion a better world shall emerge out of the blood and carnage of the past, a world dedicated to the dignity of man and the fulfillment of his most cherished wish for freedom, tolerance and justice.

Narrator: In the days following the surrender ceremony, a few hundred U.S. servicemen held as prisoners of war by the Japanese were crowded onto the deck of The Big Stick as she sailed out of the harbor.

♪♪ And so the troops came home, home from Iwo Jima and Arnhem, from Taiwan, Anzio, from Okinawa and Busan and the United States turned to peace and the pursuit of peacetime happiness and the tools of war were put away, guns and ships and armor.

♪♪ Narrator: Long before BB-61 became the pride of the Navy, the original Iowa was designed as a fast-sailing, hit-and-run slope for the Civil War.

But by the time she was fully ready, the war was over and she never saw active service.

30 years later, USS Iowa BB-4 was a distinguished battleship blazing an 11,000 ton trail in the Spanish-American War.

But BB-4's story ended just after the United States entered the Washington Naval Treaty of 1922.

Joining Britain, Japan, France and Italy, the United States agreed to limit the size and number of her ships.

This agreement scrapped a third USS Iowa BB-53 already under construction.

As Japan formally broke the treaty in 1934, the United States followed suit, building the 45,000 ton Iowa Class of battleships.

♪♪ Narrator: During the nearly 50 years the Iowa Class ships were in service, more than half that time was spent at the Navy's reserve or mothball fleet.

By 1949, all of the Iowa Class ships were placed in reserve, but only for a short period of time.

♪♪ Suddenly and without warning, the North Korean Communist regime launched a brutal and unprovoked attack on the Republic of Korea.

Republican troops sprang to the defense of their country and tried to stem the tide of invasion from the north.

It was now apparent that international Communism was prepared to resort to armed force in its plan for world domination.

Keith Nitka: The Korean War comes along, well we have battleships, let's put them to work.

We've got low mileage, lots of strength in the hull, we still have the ammunition.

Let's put them to work.

Narrator: When the Iowa was brought out of mothballs, it found itself in a post-battleship world.

North Korea had only a small Navy comprised mostly of small ships and submarines.

Reactivated in 1951, the Iowa was recommissioned for its second decade of service, a new war and with a new crew of more than 2,000 sailors on board.

The ship was commonly referred to as a city at sea.

What makes a ship happy?

Part of the answer is having all the facilities of a hometown, including a well-equipped bakery.

It takes 850 loaves of bread a day to feed our crew of 2,700 men.

Bob Atkinson: I served 1952, my job was meteorologist, airologist, I was a weatherman aboard.

Even as the ship traveled wherever it went, every 6 hours, a weather observation had to be made, getting it back out on the wire to the rest of the fleet and the world.

Guy Patten: I've told a lot of people as a midshipman I was there for training, they found every job that nobody wanted to do, that's what I did.

They want it done, they give you an order, you do it.

We got way down to Cuba, it was 100 degrees, total humidity, just terribly hot and the found a place in the bowels of the ship that had a raised floor.

So they said, you can get underneath that crawl space and scrape all that rust off and paint it all.

At 100 degrees it's just unbelievable hot heat.

Bill Humienny: It took me two weeks to find my way around.

I was getting lost.

I was like a kid, I didn't know what I was doing.

(laughter) They put me in first division and that was turret one.

I was a range fighter in there.

And when they fired that thing, you see the big shell go flying, flying in the air.

It was amazing.

(explosions) Narrator: Iowa's role in Korea was similar to its service in World War II, except in Korea its gun turrets were much busier.

(explosions) Our mission of Korea -- most of those supplies which keep the Communist armies fed and equipped.

David Way: There was some days that she was firing 24 hours a day for a seven month deployment.

In that time, she fired twice as many rounds as she did in all of World War II of 16-inch and 5-inch guns.

Bob Atkinson: It was very serious.

We recognized that every time that we launched a round somebody was going to probably get hurt.

So, you had to keep that in the back of your mind.

But, we were out there to do a job.

(explosions) Bob Atkinson: I have met some ground pounders who could appreciate what the vessel did because when they heard let's say the whoosh, whoosh of the 16-inch projectile, they could sleep but the enemy could not.

So it really was, made me feel good that we were able to do something like that.

♪♪ David Way: She was very effective in protecting the troops and the Marines.

So just their presence definitely within about a 20-mile range off the coast is intimidating, to say the least.

They saved allied troops probably several hundred if not thousands of their lives.

Narrator: Following seven eventful months off the Korean Coast, the Iowa made its way back to Norfolk, Virginia in the fall of 1952.

No one could have known it, but after earning 11 battle stars across two wars, the Iowa had seen its last combat engagement.

♪♪ David Way: After the war she went on to tradition peacetime duties that a battleship would do, midshipman cruises, showing the flag as kind of an ambassador or floating ship of state, so to speak.

But this time, after her years of service, she retired and was mothballed in Philadelphia for about 26 years.

Narrator: Nearly a decade later, the United States entered the Vietnam War.

However, only Iowa's sister ship, the USS New Jersey BB-62, was recommissioned.

The Iowa's active service career was far from over.

But the military deemed reactivating all four of the Iowa Class battleships unnecessary.

Ultimately, the Navy decided the Iowa Class battleships were too expensive and the mighty ships were sent back to the mothball fleet.

David Way: The crew size is huge.

In the World War II era she had almost 2,800 sailors on board, the Korean War about roughly 2,400.

And even in the '80s, the Cold War period, she had about 1,400.

Now, if you compared that with the backbone of the fleet today are the Burke Class destroyers.

They have a crew size of about 300, 320.

So you have five times the size of the crews, the salaries, the benefits.

Keith Nitka: So, now I was one of 1,600 sailors in Desert Storm on board Battleship Wisconsin.

So, 1,600 sailors require three meals a day, we get paid twice a month and if we're married I get an allowance for dependents.

Today's fleet runs on either nuclear or gas turbines and we require diesel fuel.

Diesel fuel burns our water to make steam to make us go through the water.

Where you're talking in miles per gallon in your car, we're talking in battleships in feet per gallon.

We run 15 feet per gallon of diesel fuel that we burn.

In today's prices, that is an astronomical cost.

On top of all of that, I can only do 32 Tomahawk missiles.

I can't do any more.

Dave Canfield: Watch your head as you step over this.

The steel is pretty unforgiving.

All right, so this is Broadway.

This is home to me.

So, Broadway is the longest contiguous passageway on the ship, meaning the single longest uninterrupted passageway.

So, this is the engineering plant.

It is encased inside the armor belt because without your engineering plant you can't move and you can't fight.

Everything on here is powered by steam.

There are not enough backup generators and diesel to actually fire the weapons.

The diesel generators give you only enough power to restart the steam plant, which then gives you enough power to move the turrets.

Dave Canfield: So, this is the top end of the boiler.

This is how we make steam.

In the 1940s and 1950s we burned something called NSFO, which is the Navy standard fuel oil.

NSFO is one step up from crude.

It is thick, it's like pudding, it's not highly refined.

It had to be heated before you could run it through pipes.

It was incredibly difficult to work with.

In the 1980s we burned diesel fuel Marine, it's basically number two diesel.

The only alteration that needed to be made to these boilers to do that was to change the tip in the burner, which is about a 25 cent piece.

Dave Canfield: This is our shipfitter shop.

But one of the coolest places over here -- is this right here.

This workbench has this stamped into it, which are all of the sailors present in this shop during V-J Day.

And then you can see '86 when the Statue of Liberty was rededicated it was here and then there is the decommissioning crew over here.

The difference in the quality of work between the World War II sailors and my contemporaries in the '80s, almost embarrassing, almost embarrassing.

♪♪ ♪♪ The Vice President of the United States, George Bush.

George HW Bush: And it occurs to me that wherever freedom is triumph, there too has triumphed peace.

That will be the mission of the modernized Iowa.

She will be defending freedom and in defending freedom she will be an important instrument in promoting world peace.

George HW Bush: I hereby place the United States Ship Iowa in commission.

God bless and God speed.

(applause) ♪♪ Narrator: After 23 years in mothballs, with great fanfare, the Iowa was called back to active service.

First, spending two years being refitted with modern weapons and technology, by 1984, the Iowa was made ready to sail for the first time with no immediate combat need.

Instead, the Iowa entered a new type of war, the Cold War.

For more than three decades, the threat of aggression loomed over the world's two biggest nuclear powers, the United States and the Soviet Union.

Rather than enter into an actual war with the Soviets, newly-elected U.S. President Ronald Reagan took a different tack.

In 1980, Reagan had campaigned under the idea of a 600-ship Navy.

By 1979, the Navy's fleet had dropped to a low of 521 ships.

The Reagan buildup would bring the Navy back to Vietnam era numbers with the hopes of promoting democracy and discouraging any would-be combatants from taking a shot at either the United States or its allies.

Included in that buildup were plans to pull several ships out of mothballs and USS Iowa was on that list.

Vernie Hart: When I first stepped on it, you're like, this is massive.

And you start walking around it, you start looking at the guns and you're thinking, how does this thing even float?

And of course, when I got to it, it was all rusty steel and everything and stuff was being modified.

And that's where we all pitched in and we actually got the ship done early.

At the time that there was still going on in Beirut and they were trying to get us out so we go to Beirut, instead the New Jersey went there.

By the time I was 22 years old, 24 different countries.

Been through the Panama Canal many times.

Been to South Central America, all the way up to Mexico.

Narrator: To avoid the long journey from the Atlantic to the Pacific around the tip of South America, the Iowa went through the Panama Canal, just like she had done during World War II.

With a width of 108-feet, she barely squeezed through the tighter spots of the Canal, occasionally scraping the walls of the 109-foot wide channel.

Vernie Hart: When we went to Northern Europe there was other, you know, the German Navy, there was the French Navy and stuff like that, that also went out with us.

We put on a fire power show for them, just to show them hey, we have the capabilities and this is what we're about.

(explosions) ♪♪ Narrator: While the Iowa's first mission was defense, followed closely by the effort to maintain peaceful avenues for international shipping, her sailors were sent on humanitarian missions wherever she sailed.

Vernie Hart: Even in some of the other countries, South Central America, a lot of work at orphanages and stuff.

A couple of the other enginemen went over, they fixed their cooling system for their reefer unit.

I also, I had a ship surface pin, so I learned every system on the ship.

I learned how to steer the ship, I learned how to transfer from the bridge to the aft steering, I learned how to fire the guns.

The government came up with that program especially after Pearl Harbor because there wasn't enough people cross trained to take over and save the ship.

And that's how you're going to survive.

♪♪ Narrator: As there were 40 years between the initial build and the 1980s reactivation, many upgrades were needed on the Iowa Class battleships.

While her 16-inch guns were impressive and cut an imposing silhouette, the 1980s saw each ship equipped with harpoon anti-ship missiles and Tomahawk land attack cruise missiles.

Whereas a 16-inch round could travel 23 miles, a cruise missile could fly 1,500 miles guided by an on-board computer.

Additionally, four Phalanx automatic defense gatling gun systems were installed replacing two 5-inch gun mounts and four anti-aircraft guns.

Finally, the Iowa was the first battleship to be fitted with the Pioneer, a new class of unmanned aerial vehicles which could be remotely piloted from the ship.

While not part of her armament, the most striking improvement was her reduction in crew size from 2,800 sailors in World War II to 1,500 sailors.

Although technological advancements allowed for the reduced crew, the demands of the city at sea were still rigorous.

Vernie Hart: I was a Navy hull technician, HT3.

When I first went on the ship I was just a fireman.

I was the only E3 that ever was a fire marshall at that time on the Iowa when we were in port to head up all the fire parties and make sure that everything stayed safe and sound.

Michael Meldrum: I was a boiler technician.

Basically a boiler is something that you take water, boil it, it makes steam, then you add more heat to it to make it super heated.

It goes over to the engine room, spins the turbines, which makes the ship go.

When you're underway, you have to take care of everything.

You've got to keep the lights on, you've got to make water, people are making food, you've got people getting supplies, it's a full team working together.

Civilian people just don't understand because they've never been in that environment.

Mark McKenzie: I was in gun turret one, the left gun poison.

I was the rammer man.

And then later on I was a deck seaman, I was pretty much just in charge of, well, a berthing space and the head, which is the bathroom.

It's like a brotherhood, having somebody that's got my back and I've got their back and you get to connect with them whether they from up north, down south, out west or the Philippines or wherever.

Dave Canfield: So I started as what was called a non-rated fireman apprentice.

It's an E2.

I had the sexy job of making fresh water, that's what I did.

We ran a distilling plant and we made about 110,000 gallons of fresh water a day.

Most people go wow, a crew uses that much water?

I'm like no, no, the crew is an afterthought.

The boilers use that much water.

Narrator: Throughout the 1980s, the Iowa saw no combat, primarily performing training and gunnery exercises.

Still, the ship did have one special experience in 1986 when she sailed into the waters of Lower Manhattan to once again be the Battleship of Presidents.

Dave Canfield: Just before I came on board we had the presidential visit from Ronald Reagan.

I was really sad that I missed that.

But the ship was the platform that Reagan used to do the International Naval Review in New York Harbor for the unveiling of the Statue of Liberty after her restoration, which was pretty amazing.

♪♪ Narrator: Dubbed Liberty Weekend, President Reagan boarded the Iowa and sailed past the backdrop of the Manhattan skyline, surrounded by more than 30 ships representing democracies from around the world.

With the restoration of the Statue of Liberty as the fulcrum of the weekend, the event was easily the pinnacle of Iowa's 1980s service.

President Ronald Reagan: Perhaps, indeed, these vessels embody our conception of liberty itself, to have before one no impediments, only open space.

(applause) Narrator: By 1988, Iowa was spending a considerable amount of time in the Persian Gulf escorting Kuwaiti ships and would likely have joined her sister Iowa Class battleships in Gulf War combat.

However, fate had something much more cruel in store.

Dave Canfield: A lot of people surprisingly don't know about April 19th.

And for those who don't know, the preface is the ship was the site of one of the largest peacetime loss of life accidents on April 19, 1989 when we had an open breach explosion in the center gun of turret two.

It killed 47 people in the turret.

It killed everybody that was in the turret, the entire turret structure.

Darrell Lewis: But on the morning of the 19th, I was in the upper handling room of Mount 56 as a twin 5-inch 54 gun, our gun filled with smoke so we struck down all of our ammunition.

I come out on the porch side and headed forward and as I did I witnessed the secondary explosion in the gun, the 17-inch thick steel gun mount actually expanded and contracted before my eyes.

I knew we were in trouble.

♪♪ Dave Canfield: Everybody knew something bad had happened.

Then general quarters went down, which is the alarm that goes whether you're going to battle stations or something terrible has happened.

And they immediately come over during that general quarters, general quarters, all hands man your battle station, reason for general quarters unexplained detonation in turret two.

♪♪ Narrator: Immediately following the call to general quarters, sailors were on deck hosing down the smoking turret.

All remaining black powder bags on the ship were flooded to prevent another catastrophic explosion.

Michael Meldrum: I was repair 5, I was one of the first people there in a full blown team to get there because all the engineers worked right in Broadway and we got all suited up and took off for the turret.

Darrell Lewis: Later in that day, they called for a boatswain mate to come in and remove the casualties.

So I went in, in the decks between, which there's two projectile decks, an electric deck and a mechanical deck, and then you get down to the bottom and you've got the powder flats.

The electrical decks and the upper projectile decks, the fireball shot down through the open hatches and stayed contained in the shape of the hatches and went down and mushroomed in the bottom.

But as it passed by it caused a vacuum and it sucked the air out of the space.

The guys, the only thing you could see that they were gone is they had a little blood coming out of their ears and their nose.

(explosions) Michael Meldrum: I'll never forget that day.

The bad thing about a fire on a ship is you're using water to put it out.

Well, you're floating in that water and the more water you use to try and put it out, you could sink yourself.

Darrell Lewis: It happened mid-morning, the explosion did.

I brought the last guy out, me and one other guy, we brought the last guy out about 2 a.m. the next morning and my clothes smelled like burnt flesh and scorched hydraulic fluid so I took them off and threw them off the ship.

♪♪ Michael Meldrum: I was trained.

I did what I was supposed to do, did as I was told and everybody else did too because we saved the rest of the 1,500 people that were on the ship and saved the ship.

Narrator: Seriously damaged and floating in the gunnery practice waters off Puerto Rico, the Iowa was called back to Norfolk for further investigation into the cause of the accident.

Keith Nitka: Catastrophic accident on board Iowa caused a moratorium on shooting projectiles from battleships.

When we actually left for the Persian Gulf we were still under that moratorium.

We were not allowed to shoot our guns.

The moratorium was because they didn't really know what happened and they didn't want an accident again, so they just, you guys have got to stop.

♪♪ A memorial service was held today at the Norfolk Naval Base for the 47 men killed in last week's gun turret explosion aboard the Battleship USS Iowa.

On hand was President George Bush.

President George HW Bush: We join today in mourning for the 47 who perished and in thanks for the 11 who survived.

They all were, in the words of a poet, the men behind the guns.

And now fate has written a sorrowful chapter in this history of this great ship.

Let me say to the crew of Iowa, I understand your great grief.

So never forget that your friends died for the cause of peace and freedom.

Narrator: On April 20th, the day after the explosion, the Navy launched an investigation.

Less than five months later, Navy officials delivered their findings as to why they believe the powder bags had exploded before the door to the gun had been closed.

Richard D. Milligan: I'm here to report on the investigation into the 19 April 1989 explosion in turret two on board USS Iowa.

After 20,000 tests, we found no accidental cause.

Having found material far to the normal propellant load indicating the presence of a foreign object and having the circumstantial information concerning the person manning the gun captain position, the individual with greatest access and opportunity and with knowledge of detonating devices, it is the conclusion of this investigation that the tragic explosion on board USS Iowa on 19 April was caused by a wrongful intentional act, most probably the insertion of a detonating device between powder bags one and two behind the projectile.

The gunners mate second class Clayton Hartwig was the most likely person to have introduced that detonating device.

♪♪ Narrator: During the Navy's investigation, the Iowa actually deployed one final time touring Northern Europe from June to December of 1989.

After the Navy's investigation cleared the possibility of mechanical failure as the cause of the April 19th explosion, Iowa was allowed to fire her 16-inch guns one final time.

When she returned to Norfolk for decommissioning, she returned to turmoil as the Navy's report was being openly questioned by sailors, journalists and even the FBI.

As doubts continued to mount, multiple new investigations were opened outside the Navy, starting with Congress.

Senator John Glenn: Neither the commanding officer, executive officer, weapons officer, nor the gunnery officer knew of the large number of watch stations being manned by personnel not fully qualified under PQS program.

Senator John McCain: As the investigating officer, can you think of any other way this explosion could have occurred?

Or has anybody else made a reasonable suggestion indicating another possible reason for the explosion?

Richard D.Milligan: Senator McCain, I have to say in all honesty that we looked for another possibility for this accident and we could not find one and we searched -- Narrator: Eventually, a private laboratory tested black powder bags manufactured in the same lot as the ones used in turret two on the day of the explosion.

Scientists concluded the bags could combust.

Following this development it wasn't long before the Navy re-evaluated its initial conclusion.

Admiral Frank Kelso: Considering all the evidence now available, the opinion that the explosion on board USS Iowa on 19 April 1989 resulted from a wrongful intentional act is not conclusively established by the evidence.

Independent tests by Sandia National Laboratories suggested that a possible accidental explosion might result from a high speed compressive over ram of the gun propellant powder.

Neither an intentional act nor an accidental cause can be proven or dismissed, the initial investigation contained a qualified opinion that implicated GM2 Clayton M. Hartwig USN and that opinion was interpreted by many as a conclusive finding of wrongdoing.

For this, on behalf of the U.S. Navy, I extend my sincere regrets to the family of GM2 Hartwig.

There is no clear and convincing proof of the cause of the Iowa explosion and the Navy will not imply that a deceased individual is to blame for his own death or the deaths of others without such clear and convincing proof.

Narrator: The only thing known for sure was 47 USS Iowa sailors lost their lives and much of her surviving crew had been traumatized.

(bell ringing) John Schultz: Welcome to the 33rd annual memorial service for the USS Iowa, Iowa 47.

(bell ringing) John Schultz: This event is to remember the Iowa 47, to honor them and it has grown into something a lot bigger because most of our crew suffers from PTSD.

So, everything we do is yes, we honor our 47 dead shipmates, but we are here to bring healing to those who lived.

They feel guilty for just surviving and this is where they start their healing.

Michael Meldrum: I still see all of it.

I don't let that one day ruin everything for me.

I'll never forget and it was probably the most horrible day of my life, but I know I had to move on.

I knew I had a wife, I knew I had a lifetime that I still needed to live and not be living in that one moment.

John Schultz: Now for the reading of the names.

GMG3 Robert Wallace Backherms, Ravenna, Ohio.

(bell ringing) Mark McKenzie: I was on board and you try to bottle it up, but basically we were hit with one of those, in order to get off the ship you had to sign a gag order.

So it meant locking that away and keeping it within yourself.

(bell ringing) GMG2 John Peter Kramer Gunners, Uniontown, Pennsylvania.

(bell ringing) Darrell Lewis: Never really dealt with it.

Me personally I can't have personal intimate relationships because of feelings.

I had to press my feelings down and hold them back, you know.

So, when you do that it's hard to care about other people and hard to care about yourself.

(bell ringing) EM3 David L. Hanson, Perkins, South Dakota.

(bell ringing) Dave Canfield: All of us have trauma.

And that day was certainly traumatic.

It was certainly traumatic for me, very traumatic for the families and to my shipmates.

You guys are battleship strong.

You know why?

We successfully did a deployment for six months.

We pulled back in on December 7th of 1989 because we finished the job.

(bell ringing) Seaman Otis Lavance Moses, Bridgeport, Connecticut.

(bell ringing) Seaman Bryan Robert Jones, Kennesaw, Georgia.

(bell ringing) John Schultz: Everybody asks why the Iowa crew is so close after all these years.

And my brother is a retired Navy chief.

And I said, Mike, the other three battleships, their crews aren't near as close as ours.

Without skipping a beat he said, it's because of the turret explosion.

It brought you guys together like no other crew ever has been.

It's something that can't be changed, but it is something that has brought us all together to make us stronger.

(bell ringing) GMG2 Clayton Michael Hartwig, Cleveland, Ohio.

(bell ringing) John Schultz: That's an awfully long list but we're here to honor them.

But we're here to offer healing to you, to all of us.

Jose Remon: This is definitely a great experience.

I mean, coming back to the ship after 30 years, my car tag is a USS Iowa tag.

My kids know everything about the Iowa.

So being back here is just emotional.

Feels just like old times, doesn't it?

No, the food looks better.

(laughter) ♪♪ Narrator: Even though she may not be in service or out at sea, the Iowa serves an important purpose.

Berthed in San Pedro, California as the Battleship USS Iowa Museum, service members and civilians alike visit her daily to take in her might firsthand.

Scott Williamson: There is as much below the water as there is above the water.

Oh, there's more.

Scott Williamson: Yeah, you look at how much is up above your head and think that far down plus, this is a pretty damn big thing.

♪♪ Narrator: Since the ship opened as a museum in 2012, USS Iowa veterans return to the ship for a reunion, partially to catch up, but in reality they may be getting reacquainted with a ship possibly taken for granted in their youth.

Scott Williamson: I was almost finished and the Master Chief of the Command, who happened to be a personnelman, came to us all one day and wanted us to write down our dream billets.

Where do you want to go?

I didn't know.

So I told him, I said, man, you would know a whole lot better than I would.

I said, write down your dream.

And he did.

And about two weeks later he came back to me and brought me orders to the Iowa, which really at the time didn't mean a whole lot to me, but he cried when he gave them to me.

He was, I mean, I would do anything to trade places with you and these orders.

He was very emotional about it.

And so then I had to start looking into it and figuring out, what's the big deal?

And it really was a big deal.

Mark McKenzie: I tell you, whenever the gunners mate would go ahead and shoot that bad boy off, man, it's like boom.

You always had hearing protection no matter where you were at, but there's no place you can get away from it because all this metal, steel toed shoes, your whole body racks.

There it is, that right there, that's the button, Jack.

This is if they're firing it locally.

♪♪ Narrator: When the USS Iowa Museum opened to the public, it was the last battleship to transition from mothball fleet to floating monument.

In order to keep the ship afloat, today's staff faces many of the same maintenance challenges she had when she was in service.

(sander sounds) (sander sounds) David Moser: Well, it's quite a chore for us.

We're maintaining an 888-foot ship with about 15 volunteers and paid staff.

The water just eats through the thin layers of the ships after a while, the hull plating.

And that's what we're doing here is preventing that by going along the hull and taking it down to bare metal, we're repairing all those rivets, bringing the original thickness of the hull plating back to its original thickness if it is degraded.

The rest of the super structure we can take care of that as needed over the next hundred years of need be, future crews.

But if we don't have a good hull, none of this matters.

It's amazing, I've kind of come full circle.

When I first joined the Navy they said, hey, what kind of ships do you want to be on?

I said, well battleship, battleship, battleship.

They said, well good luck, we don't have anymore.

I saw the Iowa when I was in weld school when I first joined the Navy sitting in mothballs and to be able to use my Navy expertise to help maintain this piece of history, it's really amazing.

Narrator: For years, museum staff had to lobby the Navy to keep the Iowa off the scrap heap.

Once over that hurdle, they searched for more help to transform the ship from floating derelict back to her former glory.

Mike Getscher: So, we woke up on the ship one day and it was the 30th of October and said, holy cow, we have a battleship now.

And we literally had about $12,000 in money.

The state of Iowa had promised $3 million to whomever received the vessel.

We got it the first week in March of '12, helped us clean up the ship, we painted her, we did $2.3 million of work on her just Richmond before we could even tow her down.

It helped pay for part of the tow.

It was really the seed money, the beginning.

And they've also contributed since then.

There's been some money for hull preservation.

That has been important.

Narrator: The state of Iowa has embraced its namesake ship since the 1890s when the state gifted the first Iowa battleship with formal dining silverware emblazoned with symbols from the Hawkeye state.

The state reaffirmed that relationship in 1967 when the Navy placed an exact scale replica of BB-61 in the Capitol Building, a model which is still on display.

Now, with the state helping the ship escape the mothball fleet, the museum has returned that generosity to anyone from Iowa who visits.

Mike Getscher: It's just fun.

In fact, all of the Iowans who present a driver's license from Iowa, they get aboard for free forever.

That's the way it is.

This is your battleship.

Narrator: A new vessel bears the name USS Iowa.

The Virginia Class nuclear submarine SSN-797 is already under construction.

♪♪ Narrator: However, the story of the Battleship Iowa is by no means finished.

Though the chapter of her service as a weapon is complete, the term battleship is still important for those who have served on one, or for those who endeavor to learn about her history.

The USS Iowa has a future ahead of sharing her story as the Battleship of Presidents and no other vessel can lay claim to being the flagship of the defining class of battleship.

John Schultz: Of the four Iowa Class battleships, ours is the best.

The USS Iowa is a big part of my life, always has been.

I wear my ball cap every day.

I take my dogs for a walk, I wear the ball cap.

I go to the grocery store, I wear my ball cap.

Robert Kelly : When I was in boot camp and I got orders to go to the Iowa I was like, yes!

I'm going to a battleship.

And my friends were like, what's a battleship?

And I'm like, dud, World War II, big guns.

Scott Williamson: I think everybody probably wishes that their ship was still commissioned and at sea.

I think everybody would like to think that at some point if they wanted to they could go back.

But I'm glad it's a museum.

If it wasn't a museum it would be rotting away somewhere.

And it was rotting away somewhere.

Michael Meldrum: I love this ship, even though the worst time I had in the Navy was on this ship.

I did 20 years in the Navy.

But by far this was my best command.

The camaraderie, the pride, the people just caring about one another and getting the job done.

Vernie Hart: I'm proud to say that I was from Iowa and on the Iowa.

To say that you were on the Iowa, how many people can say that they've been there, done it, lived the life of it?

Robert Kelly: It's the one reunion that I have to go every year now that she's here so I can come back and see my gal.

It's just like coming home.

Mark McKenzie: When he was giving out assignments and when they called my name out and pointed to the ship up on the wall I saw it and I was terrified.

And I actually begged not to go to that ship.

I did.

That didn't work but I was meant to be a part of this Iowa and I'm just happy to have served on this ship and to be able to come here 30 years later, life is good.

Dave Canfield: This is the last ship that was designed to get in a fist fight with somebody else at close range.

There's something old school about a battleship.

There's something kind of timeless.

We talked about how to effectively tell the story of Iowa.

Is Iowa a World War II story?

Is it a Korea story?

Is it a 1980s story?

Is it a new museum story?

It is the story of April 19th.

And the answer is yes, it's all of those because Iowa's story is big.

This is the last battleship, it really is the last battleship to be designed, this class, the last battleship that was made.

But it's pretty special to be on the last, the last of the best.

♪♪ ♪♪ ♪♪ ♪♪ ♪♪ ♪♪ Funding for this program was provided by Friends, the Iowa PBS Foundation, as well as generations of families and friends who feel passionate about the programs they watch on Iowa PBS.