The Iowa is underway!

[Mike Seymour]

http://new.livestream.com/accounts/725962/events/898014

[TopKick]

Those 16 inch guns obliterate, and blow BIG holes in buildings. Maybe she is just on a Memorial Day run.

[Chuck Lutz]

After leaving the Suisun Bay Mothball Fleet and spending some time at the Richmond shipyard, USS IOWA is under tow to Los Angeles to be a museum. She was to go under the Golden Gate Bridge this afternoon so watch the TV news tonight to see if they have footage of her departure.

[Mike Seymour]

Chuck, Angel Island was just coming into view when their web cam broke down. Nothing on the news yet..

[dilvoy]

As she passed under the Brigde the Fog Horn on the Bridge was sounded.

[dilvoy]

Here is a shot from Seal Rock in the NW corner of SF.

[dilvoy]

This shot is the last shot that I took that is decent. I took a few at 8:00 pm after she had made her turn South and was at the Southern tip of the city. Really bad shots because they were long and I have a small camera that fits into a pocket. She was slightly hull down, but her bow was still prominant and stuck up like a rhino's horn. I reckon that she was ten miles out, but that's a guess. She passed under the golden gate at 3:00 PM. It was a very slow tow once they got to Angel island inside of the bay and made the turn towards the Gate. Anyhow here is the shot that I took when I and a friend went to eat dinner.

[Jon]

"THE BIG STICK"

[Paul FitzGerald]

Jon
Somewhere I read that when she fired all her 16" guns the ship moved 6' sideways. An awsome ship. Took a tour(special) while she was in Richmond getting ready for dispersment to LA. Again a BIG vessel.
Cheers
Paul

[Rick O]

Somewhere I read that when she fired all her 16" guns the ship moved 6' sideways BIG vessel.

Looking at the waterline at the bow in that last pic, it sure looks like it moved 6' !

[Jon]

I wouldn't be at all surprised to hear that Paulie, I always think that it's the equivalent of a Volkswagen getting tossed 20 miles with every barrel....... sheezzzzzzz....that's a lot of metal to be flying through the air......

JR
Namesake: The State of Iowa
Ordered: 1 July 1939
Builder: New York Naval Yard
Laid down: 27 June 1940
Launched: 27 August 1942
Commissioned: 22 February 1943
Decommissioned: 26 October 1990
Struck: 17 March 2006
Motto: "Our Liberties We Prize, Our Rights We Will Maintain"
Nickname: "The Big Stick"
Honors and
awards: 11 battle stars
Status: A museum dedicated to battleships
Notes: Last lead ship of any class of US battleship.
Badge:

[raymond]

If I was better at math, like I was 25 years ago, I could make the calculation on how far it would move the battleship when firing the guns. You would need to know the weight of the battleship, the weight of the projectile and the force with which it was expelled from the gun. All comes down to Newton's universal laws of motion and the conservation of momentum.

Raymond

[dilvoy]

If I was better at math, like I was 25 years ago, I could make the calculation on how far it would move the battleship when firing the guns. You would need to know the weight of the battleship, the weight of the projectile and the force with which it was expelled from the gun. All comes down to Newton's universal laws of motion and the conservation of momentum.

Raymond

Six feet sounds like way too much for lots of gun powder to push a 60,000 ton plus ship when it's pushing against nine 2,500 lb projectiles including the friction inside of the barrels over the time it takes them to exit the barrel.

[bikeman]

It could be reasonable that since 6 of the guns are up front and you are seeing a wake off the bow that it did not move the entire ship, but rather conducted a "course correction" by shifting the bow (which would be much lighter than the entire ship) a few feet. Force vs weight ratio is significantly difference if you exclude over half the ship.

[Chuck Lutz]

That broadside could toss over 15 tons of shell and powder when fired simultaneously. The AP rounds weighted 2,700 lbs each and six of the 110 lb silk powder bags for maximum load made quite a bang.

The "sideways" motion of one of these behemoths when a broadside is fired has pretty much been debunked:
http://www.navweaps.com/index_tech/tech-022.htm