page_title: Iowa-class battleship
section_title: Ships
hierarchical_section_title: Iowa-class battleship / Ships
caption_attribution_description: English: U.S. Navy Battleship Division 2 in line abreast formation, 7 June 1954, in the Virginia Capes operating area, on the only occasion that all four Iowa-class battleships were photographed operating together. The ship closest to the camera is USS Iowa (BB-61). The others are (from near to far): USS Wisconsin (BB-64); USS Missouri (BB-63) and USS New Jersey (BB-62).
context_page_description: The Iowa class was a class of six fast battleships ordered by the United States Navy in 1939 and 1940. They were initially intended to intercept fast capital ships such as the Japanese Kongō class while also being capable of serving in a traditional battle line alongside slower battleships and act as its "fast wing". The Iowa class was designed to meet the Second London Naval Treaty's "escalator clause" limit of 45,000-long-ton standard displacement. Four vessels, Iowa, New Jersey, Missouri, and Wisconsin, were completed; two more, Illinois and Kentucky, were laid down but canceled in 1945 and 1958, respectively, before completion, and both hulls were scrapped in 1958–1959.
  The four Iowa-class ships were the last battleships commissioned in the US Navy. All older US battleships were decommissioned by 1947 and stricken from the Naval Vessel Registry by 1963. Between the mid-1940s and the early 1990s, the Iowa-class battleships fought in four major US wars. In the Pacific Theater of World War II, they served primarily as fast escorts for Essex-class aircraft carriers of the Fast Carrier Task Force and also shelled Japanese positions.
context_section_description: When brought into service during the final years of World War II, the Iowa-class battleships were assigned to operate in the Pacific Theatre of World War II. By this point in the war, aircraft carriers had displaced battleships as the primary striking arm of both the United States Navy and the Imperial Japanese Navy. As a result of this shift in tactics, U.S. fast battleships of all classes were relegated to the secondary role of carrier escorts and assigned to the Fast Carrier Task Force to provide anti-aircraft screening for U.S. aircraft carriers and perform shore bombardment. Three were recalled to service in the 1950s with the outbreak of the Korean War, and provided naval artillery support for U.N. forces for the entire duration of the war before being returned to mothballs in 1955 after hostilities ceased. In 1968, to help alleviate U.S. air losses over North Vietnam, New Jersey was summoned to Vietnam, but was decommissioned a year after arriving. All four returned in the 1980s during the drive for a 600-ship Navy to counter the new Soviet Kirov-class battlecruisers, only to be retired after the collapse of the Soviet Union on the grounds that they were too expensive to maintain.
  1. Kentucky was not officially launched; her hull was moved from drydock to allow Missouri to be admitted for repairs following her grounding.
caption: The four Iowa-class ships operating as Battleship Division 2 off the Virginia Capes in 1954; from front to back is Iowa, Wisconsin, Missouri and New Jersey
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