USS Iowa

Commissioned in 1943, the Iowa is the lead ship of the most powerful class of battleships ever built—16-inch guns that could hurl a 2,700-pound shell 23 miles, turbines that could drive 58,000 tons at 33 knots, and armor thick enough to survive what no other surface combatant could. The Iowa carried President Roosevelt to Casablanca, bombarded targets from Korea to Lebanon to the Persian Gulf, and was recommissioned three times before her final decommissioning in 1990. She is now preserved as a museum ship in Los Angeles.