Battleship Iowa Mothballed; Victim of Budget, Explosion

The Navy decommissioned the battleship Iowa on Friday, retiring the World War II-era ship that became a casualty of Pentagon budget cuts after an April, 1989, gun turret explosion killed 47 crewmen.

The Iowa, decommissioned for the third time, is being mothballed just six years after a $348.7-million renovation returned the ship to active duty.

“It’s like burying one of your people,” said Dusty Curtis, 67, of Lansing, Mich., who served aboard the Iowa from 1943 to 1945. “You wonder what they spent all the money for. Now it’s going to waste.”

Critics have argued that the nation’s four remaining battleships were strategically outdated and should have remained in mothballs.

The powerful vessel was retired by a reluctant skipper, who addressed hundreds of former Iowa crewmen, their families and relatives of those who died in the blast during a shipboard ceremony at Norfolk Naval Station.

“As commanding officer, I find this process of inactivation most painful,” said Cmdr. John P. Morse. “To a man, we are reluctant to give up our ship.”

Morse and other officers, speaking under gray skies as wind and rain whipped the crowd gathered on the Iowa’s wooden deck, said they were optimistic the Iowa will return to active duty.

“Iowa will not be scrapped but will continue to stand as a symbol of our resolve to keep the ‘big stick’ available,” said Adm. Jerome L. Johnson, vice chief of naval operations. “If we need her again, she will be there.”

The Iowa is being retired along with the battleship New Jersey, based in Long Beach, Calif., which is slated to be taken out of service in February. Retirement of the two vessels will leave the United States with two active Iowa-class battleships, the Wisconsin and the Missouri.