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.

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.

A unique compilation of technical data and the career histories of the lowa, New Jersey, Wisconsin, and Missouri.

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.

Warship Builders is the first scholarly study of the U.S. naval shipbuilding industry from the early 1920s to the end of World War II, when American shipyards produced the world's largest fleet that helped defeat the Axis powers in all corners of the globe. A colossal endeavor that absorbed billions and employed virtual armies of skilled workers, naval construction mobilized the nation's leading industrial enterprises in the shipbuilding, engineering, and steel industries to deliver warships whose technical complexity dwarfed that of any other weapons platform. Based on systematic comparisons with British, Japanese, and German naval construction, Thomas Heinrich pinpoints the distinct features of American shipbuilding methods, technology development, and management practices that enabled U.S. yards to vastly outproduce their foreign counterparts. Throughout the book, comparative analyses reveal differences and similarities in American, British, Japanese, and German naval construction. Heinrich shows that U.S. and German shipyards introduced electric arc welding and prefabrication methods to a far greater extent than their British and Japanese counterparts between the wars, laying the groundwork for their impressive production records in World War II. While the American and Japanese navies relied heavily on government-owned navy yards, the British and German navies had most of their combatants built in corporately-owned yards, contradicting the widespread notion that only U.S. industrial mobilization depended on private enterprise. Lastly, the U.S. government's investments into shipbuilding facilities in both private and government-owned shipyards dwarfed the sums British, Japanese, and German counterparts expended. This enabled American builders to deliver a vast fleet that played a pivotal role in global naval combat.

USS Iowa BB-61, the first of four Iowa-class battleships built for the U.S. Navy, was launched in 1942. Capable of thirty-three knots and armed with nine new fifty-caliber sixteen-inch guns, she was the pinnacle of battleship design for the U.S. Navy during World War II. The Iowa class perfectly merged the heavy armor of battleships with the speed of battlecruisers. Iowa's speed and heavy armament positioned her to accompany and protect U.S. Fast Carrier task forces through the Pacific War by participating in multiple actions from Truck, the Philippine Sea, Leyte, and ending in Tokyo Bay. Deactivated in 1948, the outbreak of the Korean War saw Iowa recommissioned in 1951 for shore bombardment duty in support of United Nation troops against the North Korean army invasion. Iowa returned to the U.S. in 1952, and then participated in NATO exercises until she was decommissioned in 1958. Soviet expansion and rearmament programs in the 1970's saw Iowa recommissioned in 1984 following a two-year modernization program. This program saw the addition of nuclear capable Tomahawk and Harpoon missiles and modern computer-based communication technology. Extensive exercises with NATO forces and goodwill visits carried through until April 1989, when tragedy struck the ship with an explosion in gun turret two killing 47crew members. The soundness of Iowa's design and her armored strength prevented the explosion from reaching her magazines and the potential loss of the ship. Decommissioned in October 1990 and placed in reserve, she would eventually be stricken from the Navy record in 2006. Transferred to the Port of Los Angeles in 2012, Iowa now serves as the National Museum of the Surface Navy located at San Pedro, California.

Probes the explosion of the center gun on the USS Iowa, a disaster that killed several sailors onboard instantly, and the fouled investigation that took followed, resulting in a large-scale cover-up that almost ruined forever the reputation of innocent men.