The USS Iowa with its 16-inch guns was highly decorated for action against the Japanese in the Pacific during World War II, but its worst moment came in the Atlantic when a lone torpedo bore down on the vessel.
For at that time, the ship was secretly carrying President Franklin D. Roosevelt on a mission.The president was being taken to a meeting in Cairo and Tehran with British Prime Minister Winston Churchill and Soviet leader Josef Stalin to plan the second front against Hitler.
Also aboard were the Army chief of staff, the White House chief of staff, virtually the entire military command and most of the president's closest White House aides.
On Nov. 13, 1943, the battleship pulled out to sea with its secret passengers bound for Cairo. On the second day, the ship's quarters sounded. A torpedo was bearing down on the vessel.
The Iowa's huge batteries fired in a desperate but unsuccessful effort to detonate the torpedo. As it closed, there was a hush as everyone on the ship waited to see what would happen.
Then cheers erupted as the missile passed harmlessly astern. As it turned out, Navy officials said, the president was fired upon by one of his own Navy destroyers. The ship had fired the torpedo by mistake during a drill.
Despite this near-miss in the Atlantic, the Iowa saw most of its action in the Pacific theater, pounding Japanese-held islands before U.S. invasion forces landed.
First launched in August 1942 and commissioned in 1943, the Iowa saw action in the campaign for the Marshall Islands, the Marianas, the Western Caroline islands, Okinawa and others.
It later was involved in the second and third winter operations in Korea in 1952. It was nine battle stars in World War II and two battle stars in Korea.
Like the other Iowa-class battleships, the 58,000-ton battleship was then mothballed until President Reagan decided to modernize and recommission them in the 1980s.
Following its $400 million modernization, which included adding Tomahawk and Harpoon missiles to its weapons systems, the Iowa was recommissioned in 1984 and sent to the Mediterranean near Lebanon that same year to replace its sister ship, the USS New Jersey. The Iowa saw no action.