Military
USS Iowa, a retired United States Navy battleship now at the Port of Los Angeles, was the lead ship of the Iowa class and the last lead ship of any American battleship class. Commissioned in 1943, she served in the Atlantic during World War II, carrying President Franklin D. Roosevelt toward the Cairo and Tehran conferences and surviving an accidental torpedo incident. Transferred to the Pacific, she screened carriers, bombarded shore targets, and helped sink the Japanese cruiser Katori. Iowa later fought in the Korean War, returned to service during the late Cold War, and is remembered for both major wartime service and the 1989 turret explosion that killed 47 sailors.
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