USS Iowa turret explosion
The USS Iowa was a battleship of the U.S. Navy. She was launched on 27 August 1942 and commissioned on 22 February 1943. The ship served in both World War II and the Korean War. It is the only ship in the Navy to be named in the Panama Canal disaster.
About USS Iowa turret explosion in brief
On 19 April 1989, the Number Two 16-inch gun turret of the United States Navy battleship USS Iowa exploded. The explosion in the center gun room killed 47 of the turret’s crewmen and severely damaged the gun turret itself. Two major investigations were undertaken into the cause of the explosion, one by the U. S. Navy and one by Sandia National Laboratories. The investigations produced conflicting conclusions. In August 1991, Sandia and the GAO completed their reports, concluding that it was likely that the explosion was caused by an accidental overram of powder bags into the breech. The U.S. Navy, however, disagreed with Sandia’s opinion and concluded that the cause could not be determined. Iowa was decommissioned on 24 February 1958 and entered the Atlantic Reserve Fleet at Philadelphia Naval Shipyard. She remained in the Reserve Fleet until 1983. At this time, Iowa was moved to Avondale Shipyards near New Orleans, Louisiana, to undergo a modernization as part of President Ronald Reagan’s \”600-ship Navy\” plan. In order to expedite the schedule, many necessary repairs to Iowa’s engines and guns were not completed and the mandatory US Navy Board of Inspection and Survey inspection was not conducted at that time. Almost two years later, beginning on 17 March 1986, Iowa underwent her overdue InSurv inspection under the supervision of Rear Admiral John D. Bulkeley; the ship failed the inspection.
In an Operation Propulsion Program, Iowa’s Chief of Naval Operations personally recommended that the ship be taken out of service immediately. A month after the operation, Iowa failed an OperationSurvition Program and was mothballed. The ship was eventually retired in 1991 and sold to a private company for $1.2 billion. She was the lead ship of her class of battleship. The Iowa-class battleship was launched on 27 August 1942 and commissioned on 22 February 1943. Iowa’s main battery consisted of nine 16 inch 50-caliber guns. After serving in both World War II and the Korean War, the ship was decomissioned in 1991. The USS Iowa was sold for $2.5 billion in 1994. It was scrapped in 1998 and replaced by the USS Iowa-Class battleship, which served in the Atlantic Fleet until the end of the Navy’s modernization program in 2002. The battleship is now a museum ship. It has been named after a former captain of the Iowa Class, who died in a fire aboard the battleship in the 1980s. It is the only ship in the Navy to be named in the Panama Canal disaster. It also served as a training ship during the Second World War and the Gulf of Mexico crisis in the 1990s. The Battleship Iowa was named in honor of the late Captain Gerald E. Gneckow, who was killed in a friendly fire incident in the Battle of the Alaskan Gulf in the 1950s. She is the first battleship to be called the “Iowa Class” in the Second Gulf War.
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This page is based on the article USS Iowa turret explosion published in Wikipedia (as of Dec. 08, 2020) and was automatically summarized using artificial intelligence.
