The Battleships of the Iowa Class A Design and Operational History

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.

Philippe Caresse was born into a naval family in 1964 and joined the French Navy in 1982, serving in the destroyer d’Estrées. He has published an extensive range of ship monographs on the French, German, U.S., and Japanese navies from the late-nineteenth century to the Second World War and is co-author with John Jordan of French Battleships of World War One (2017) and French Armoured Cruisers. He is the harbormaster of a marina on the Côte d’Azur.