The Iowa-class battleships were America's--and the world's--last active battleships, serving as recently as 1995. Back in the World War II era, six of the class were ordered, and four completed: Iowa, New Jersey, Missouri and Wisconsin. The Missouri rose to fame as the site of the Japanese surrender ending WWII. Each armed with nine 16-inch rifles able to hurl 2,700-lb shells more than 23 miles, the Iowas were capable of combating formidable sea-going foes. In actuality, however, their huge main guns were used instead to shell enemy land positions during WWII, Korea, Vietnam, and the Gulf War. In later years their original arrays of 16-inch and five-inch guns were augmented with missiles, including the Harpoon as well as the Tomahawk cruise missiles. Explore the decks and depths of these mighty warships, once home to thousands of sailors, 88 pages packed with over 270 color photos, carefully chosen to show the subtle differences between these four near-identical ships.

A Visual Tour of Battleship USS New Jersey is a photographic exploration of the entire ship, from the top of the mainmast to the bottom of the chain locker. It capture areas of USS New Jersey that have never appeared in print before.

USS Iowa (BB-61) was the lead ship in one of the most famous classes of battleships ever commissioned into the US Navy. Transferred to the Pacific Fleet in 1944, the Iowa first fired her guns in anger in the Marshall Islands campaign, and sunk her first enemy ship, the Katori. The Iowa went on to serve across a number of pivotal Pacific War campaigns, including at the battles of the Philippine Sea and Leyte Gulf. The ship ended the war spending several months bombarding the Japanese Home Islands before the surrender in August 1945. After taking part in the Korea War, the Iowa was decommissioned in 1958, before being briefly reactivated in the 1980s as part of President Reagan's 600-Ship Navy Plan. After being decommissioned a second and final time in 1990, the Iowa is now a museum ship in Los Angeles. This new addition to the Anatomy of the Ship series is illustrated with contemporary photographs, scaled plans of the ship and hundreds of superb 3D illustrations which bring every detail of this historic battleship to life.

The USS Iowa (BB-61) was the lead ship in the United States Navy's last, and most battle-worthy, battleship class, which also included the New Jersey, Wisconsin, and Missouri. This volume explores Iowa's design, construction, launching, and commissioning, as well as its extensive wartime activities in both World War II and Korea. Also covered are its post-Korea years in the reserve "mothball fleet," recommissioning in 1984, and coverage of the tragic 1989 turret explosion that killed forty-seven sailors. The carefully researched photos, many of which have never before been published, are reproduced in remarkable clarity, and coupled with descriptive and informative captions, this book puts the reader on the deck of this historic warship throughout her history.

This volume details the design, construction, and operation of the first six of the ten US fast battleships, two of the North Carolina class and four of the South Dakota class. These six battleships were all authorized in 1936 and were the first vessels built in the US since 1923. Consequently, these ships benefitted from enormous technological leaps, with improvements in ship design, power, armor, armament and the single most important improvement the use of radar guided fire control helping to change the course of the war in the Pacific. Packed with first-hand accounts, battle reports, and specially created artwork this book tells the story of these war-winning vessels.

The four battleships of the Iowa class, the crowning achievement of U.S. battleship construction, had exceptionally long careers and each in their way left a distinctive mark not only on the U.S. Navy but on naval history at large. Built as the ultimate American battleship and designed to engage the major units of the Japanese and German fleets, the vessels were commissioned in the closing stages of World War II, the beginning of half a century of service during which individual units saw action in the Korean War, the Vietnam War, the Lebanese Civil War and finally the Persian Gulf War. As such, these ships are symbolic of the primacy of U.S. seapower during the Cold War, and the preservation of all four members of this mighty class as museums is testament not only to their enduring fascination for successive generations of Americans, but also to the immense technical, financial, military, and political resources wielded by the United States during the second half of the twentieth century.