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Popular lore says that prior to the debacle at Pearl Harbor, US doctrine focused on Battleships, and carriers were slighted as a striking weapon.

In fact, it was a little more nuanced than that. Carriers were seen by the fleet (even the Big Gun Admirals) as both the primary scouts of the fleet, and as a potent striking weapon.  While the assumption was still that a major fleet engagement would consist of both the US and Japanese lines of battle engaging in a gun duel reminiscent of Trafalgar or Jutland, the presumption on the US side was that carrier attacks would whittle down the enemy fleet through day long strikes, and then the main body of battleships would close to shoot it out the next day. Japanese doctrine was remarkably similar, with the exception that they planned for heavy torpedo attacks by cruisers and destroyers  the night proceeding the main engagement.

The primary escort for carriers was the heavy (8” gun) cruiser, as only they had the speed and endurance to dash forward at over 30 knots with the carriers to launch attacks. Destroyers lacked the gunpower and fuel to adequately serve as escorts, and battleships were too slow to accompany the carriers. Note that the primary threat seen to carriers in the prewar days was enemy surface ships, primarily cruisers. While carriers were seen as potent striking weapons, the fleet understood that they were incapable of launching strikes in poor weather or at night, leaving them vulnerable to surface attack. Hence the cruiser escorts.

After the Washington Treaty moratorium on battleship construction expired, the US began building “fast battleships” which were generally capable of a speeds of around 26 knots. Simply being faster than an enemy line of battle conferred advantages.

But the desire for battleships to be able to accompany fast carriers with their speeds of over thirty knots lead to the final US class of battleships to be built- the Iowas.

Roughly a hundred feet longer than previous fast battleship classes, and with an enormous bump in horsepower, the Iowas balanced installed armor protection with firepower and speed, over 33 knots, the fasted battleships ever built. This made them ideal to operate with the fast carrier task forces. As it turned out, they rarely needed to call on their giant 16” main battery to protect the carriers. Instead, they used their massive secondary battery of 5” guns, and vast numbers of 40mm and 20mm guns to provide close in anti-aircraft support to the carriers.

The Iowas were comparitevly expensive to operate in peacetime, both in terms of fuel and manpower, so they were fairly quickly placed in reserve. But the power and accuracy of their massive gun batteries saw ships of the class recalled for duty in Korea and Vietnam.

And with the Reagan buildup of the 1980s, facing the growing Soviet effort to build a blue water fleet, the Navy was willing to pay the price to modernize and recommission all four ships for service.

With new radars and communications, the Iowas traded a portion of their secondary 5” battery for 16 Harpoon missiles, and eight armored box launchers for a then staggering total of 32 Tomahawk missiles. The conversion made them formidable threats to both surface and shore targets.

After a final shoot at Iraqi targets during Desert Storm, the collapse of the Soviet threat, combined with the still staggering expense of manning the ships, lead to a final decommissioning of the class. While technically by law two of the class are still subject to reactivation, in fact, all four are now museum ships.

The USS Iowa, recently transferred from the Bay Area to San Pedro at the Port of Los Angeles, is now open to the public. To be honest, I was a touch disappointed with the tour. Most of the tour is of the main deck, and the superstructure up to  the navigation bridge level, and briefly down to the mess decks. The ship has yet to open tours of the turrets, Combat Information Center, or the ship’s engineering plant. As the foundation running the museum gathers funds, they plan to add those spaces to the tour.

The Los Angeles Maritime Museum is a separate entity, but located just down the street from the Iowa, and is very much worth the very modest suggested donation, with a nice array of ship models, and a historical overview of the history of the port of Los Angeles.