Iowa-class battleship: Difference between revisions

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The four ''Iowa''-class ships were the last battleships commissioned in the US Navy. All older US battleships were [[Decommissioned (ship)|decommissioned]] by 1947 and stricken from the ''[[Naval Vessel Register]]'' (NVR) by 1963. Between the mid-1940s and the early 1990s, the ''Iowa''-class battleships fought in four major US wars. In the [[Pacific War|Pacific Theater]] of World War II, they served primarily as fast [[Ocean escort|escorts]] for {{sclass|Essex|aircraft carrier|}}s of the [[Fast Carrier Task Force]] and also shelled Japanese positions. During the [[Korean War]], the battleships provided [[naval gunfire support]] (NGFS) for [[United Nations Command|United Nations forces]], and in 1968, ''New Jersey'' shelled [[Viet Cong]] and [[Vietnam People's Army]] forces in the [[Vietnam War]]. All four were reactivated and modernized at the direction of the [[United States Congress]] in 1981, and armed with [[missile]]s during the 1980s, as part of the [[600-ship Navy]] initiative. During [[Operation Desert Storm]] in 1991, ''Missouri'' and ''Wisconsin'' fired missiles and {{convert|16|in|0|adj=on}} guns at [[Iraq]]i targets.