USS Iowa at Richmond, California 2/24/11
It’s great that the Iowa is going to be a museum ship in Los Angeles, but I hope they are prepared to spend a lot of money to maintain this huge piece of steel. It has been sitting in the Reserve Fleet for something like 20 years. There is rust everywhere, the teak decks are a total mess. There won’t be a crew of nearly 2,000 to scrape paint and keep the 1930′s technology working. It’s very difficult to keep up a large ship with the handful of volunteers that typically sign up for such an adventure.
In addition, switches, relays, limit switches, electric motors, controllers, and other parts of this ship haven’t been manufactured for probably at least 60 years. A ship like this would tax the abilities of a fully equipped and operating shipyard.
I really hope it works out, but many other military museum ships are in dire financial straits.
