Battleship Iowa Returns to San Francisco

The Navy returned to San Francisco in a big way Saturday.

The Iowa, one of the nation’s four largest battleships, docked in Suisun Bay opposite Benicia.

The occasion marked the first time the huge ship has returned to Bay Area waters in nearly half a century--and many of the ship’s former crew members were on hand to welcome it home.

John Lapotasky, former president of the USS Iowa Veterans Assn., began his long relationship with the Iowa at age 17. He was a boiler technician on the ship for nearly four years beginning in February 1955. Lapotasky traveled from Manville, N.J., for the event.

“We’re really excited about it--to the point of tears,” he said.

“They say they don’t make battleship sailors anymore,” he said. “I think that anybody who served aboard that battleship is a better man by serving on board. You have to grow up fast when you’re on a class act like the Iowa.”

The Iowa is 886 feet long--nearly three football fields. The height from the ship’s keel to the tip of its mast is 14 stories. Thirteen feet of mast had to be removed so the ship could pass under the Golden Gate Bridge.

“The Navy really is coming back to San Francisco,” said Bill Stephens, director of the Historic Ships Memorial at Pacific Square. “The group’s been working for years to bring the ship here.”

The Iowa is the premier member of a group of vessels known as Iowa class battleships. The others are the Missouri, the Wisconsin and the New Jersey. The Missouri is now in Hawaii and has been converted into a museum, as has the New Jersey, which is in its namesake state. The Wisconsin is docked in Norfolk, Va., and will become a museum soon.

The Iowa will stay docked in the Bay Area for at least two years. After that, the Navy will decide if it needs the ship or if it, too, will be turned into a museum, as memorial group members advocate. “She served her time. Now it’s time to give her a rest,” Lapotasky said.