A little known fact that all Iowa-class is also a floating hotel.The reason they didn't receive the same moniker as Yamato was,they were more active and saw more service(They have seen the Pacific,Atlantic,Mediterranean and the Persian Gulf).
A little known fact that all Iowa-class is also a floating hotel.The reason they didn't receive the same moniker as Yamato was,they were more active and saw more service(They have seen the Pacific,Atlantic,Mediterranean and the Persian Gulf).
Also, floats beats ice-cream anytime.
The biggest reason they saw more action is because the US actually had the resources to blow and waste on huge ships like those where as Japan did not.
I hope not. All of the Iowas were historically bad at handling their destroyer escorts and, by extension, preferred operating at a distance (not actually that far, mind) from them. Especially the Iowa (in WW2) after William D. Porter's error. This opinion was also echoed by the destroyers themselves, as the unique wake of the Iowas made them ridiculously difficult to resupply from for the smaller hulls. (I've been told that it was actually considered easier for the Iowas to offload supplies to a cruiser which would then offload those supplies to the destroyer, but this rarely happened because the time it would take)
Adolf95 said:
A little known fact that all Iowa-class is also a floating hotel.
Also, floats beats ice-cream anytime.
All Iowa-class BBs were equipped with Ice Cream machines, Soft-Serve Ice Cream machines (only recently invented in 1936/38 [debatable]), a complete Soda-Fountain, a bakery (donuts for days), and a fully featured kitchen. This goes farther to the point that there are tales, the validity of which are questionable, that the Wisconsin was actually visited by a Food Critic at one point during her late-life service and was given 4-stars.
The one creature comfort that the Iowas did not have that the Yamato did was Air-Conditioning; but this was fixed during their late-life reactivation.
So yeah, 'floating hotel'... except ridiculously cramped. She was originally designed to compliment only 1,921 crew, but in WW2 was crewed by 2700.
All Iowa-class BBs were equipped with Ice Cream machines, Soft-Serve Ice Cream machines (only recently invented in 1936/38 [debatable]), a complete Soda-Fountain, a bakery (donuts for days), and a fully featured kitchen. This goes farther to the point that there are tales, the validity of which are questionable, that the Wisconsin was actually visited by a Food Critic at one point during her late-life service and was given 4-stars.
The one creature comfort that the Iowas did not have that the Yamato did was Air-Conditioning; but this was fixed during their late-life reactivation.
So yeah, 'floating hotel'... except ridiculously cramped. She was originally designed to compliment only 1,921 crew, but in WW2 was crewed by 2700.
With that sort of overcrowding and the hot-bunking required, I wouldn't begrudge the sailors anything, much less ice cream and soda. Got to have something to look forward to at the end of a shift - and I can think of worse things than an ice cream float or shake.
Why did she have so many extra personnel? Part of me thinking it might be to mitigate losses, but with those cramped conditions, it seems like you'd just take a lot more causalities
Why did she have so many extra personnel? Part of me thinking it might be to mitigate losses, but with those cramped conditions, it seems like you'd just take a lot more causalities
Why did she have so many extra personnel? Part of me thinking it might be to mitigate losses, but with those cramped conditions, it seems like you'd just take a lot more causalities
All the additional AA guns that were tacked on. She went from something like ~30 x 40mm and ~20 x 20mm to ~76 x 40mm and ~55 x 20mm over the war, and all of those mounts need people, people, and more people - especially to theoretically keep them manned 24/7.
Not to mention that she was equipped as a Flagship, which meant even more crew. (All of the Iowas ended up carrying flag crew, even though only Iowa and Missouri were designed for it.)
