photo #2577868

The last and legendary USN battleships: The Iowa classThe Iowa class were six fast battleships ordered in two batches, in 1939 and 1940. They intended at first as very fast ships, almost battlecruisers, to intercept the Japanese Kongō while still able to take their place in the battleline, in a smimilar concept developed by the Germans before WW1. The Iowa class also were designed to meet the Second London Naval Treaty's "escalator clause" reaching the limit to 45,000-long-ton (45,700 t) in standard displacement. Ultimately only the first four were completed while Illinois and Kentucky were laid down but canceled in 1945 and 1958 and scrapped. Ultimately the new Montana class were preferred, but also cancelled in July 1943, in favor of completing the Essex-class, as the last battleship class ever designed for the United States Navy.This made the four Iowa-class, the last battleships ever commissioned in the US Navy. They had a short but eventiful carrier in the Pacific in 1944-45, and were decommissioned in 1947, but preserved and use din Korea, Vietnam, and even the gulf war in 1991, completely modernized in the 1980s under the Reagan adinistartion to face the new Soviet missile battlecruisers of the Kirov class. This made the Iowa-class quite unique battleships, fighting in four major US wars after being the default Essex-class aircraft carriers escort, with the Fast Carrier Task Force.- Naval Encyclopedia