[WayneS]

My father served on the Missouri during its refurbishing, and after its recommissioning, in the 1980s, and he kept me apprised of some of the things that were being done to her. He and the 'Mighty Mo' were stationed on the west coast, and I was attending school on the east coast at the time, but on one of his visits home to the Norfolk area, he made arrangements to take me on a very thorough tour of the USS Iowa. It was, quite simply, the most impressive U.S. Navy ship I have ever been aboard, and that includes the USS Nimitz and USS Eisenhower.

To augment the seemingly impossibly thick armor and those famous mammoth 16" guns, the Navy outfitted the modernized Iowa-Class battleships with some REALLY cool 'toys' that were not available during WW-II, or even the Vietnam era: things like four Phalanx platforms to help assure that no anti-ship missiles would get even within a few miles of the ship, never mind testing its armor; Harpoon and/or Tomahawk missiles; and modern electronic tracking/monitoring/countermeasures equipment.

When the modernizations of the Missouri and her three sister ships were completed they were most definitely not "your grandfather's battleships". Even today I would doubt Iran has anything in its arsenal that could cause them significant harm.

[jpsb]

It is my understanding that the Iowas had to be decommsioned because their hulls were thinning due to electrolysis. Building a new BB with modern gunnery with be very expensive but modern 16inch guns could I am told hit targets 100 miles away. Something to think about.

[Eric in the Ozarks]

Our tour of the Missouri included the control systems. Positively ancient equipment from WW 2 was side by side to modern missile delivery electronics.

They can still fire the 16 inch guns, good for 20-22 miles but the real whoopass could be launched from > 100 miles out.