Welcome to USS IOWA VETERANS ASSOCIATION

About Us

The Veteran’s Association of the USS Iowa is an IRS 501©19 nonprofit organization dedicated to ensuring our brotherhood lives on. We share information about the past history and current events associated with any vessel named USS Iowa, host regular annual reunions, ceremonies, and events, sell merchandise, which allows you to celebrate and identify you as part of the crew. The Association was started by shipmates from the 1950’s crew in the mid-1970s. What began as an Association of just a few has now reached several thousand crewmembers and associates. Our membership includes members from the Battleship Iowa’s three periods past of service 42 - 49, 51 – 58. 84 - 90 and is now expanding is now proud to see that the U.S. Navy has seen fit to have another USS Iowa join the fleet in defense of our nation. We are dedicated to maintaining friendships of shipmates, searching for shipmates that we have lost touch with, and welcoming new shipmates of the Submarine USS Iowa (SSN-797) into our ranks. The Battleship USS Iowa (BB-61) was dedicated as a museum in 2012.

Ship's History

The last class of American Battleships to be built, known as the Iowa Class, were conceived and designed in the '30s as 45,000-ton warships capable of taking on the best other navies had to offer. USS Iowa BB-61 was the lead ship and was commissioned on February 22, 1943. She and her sisters served our nation for five decades both as instruments of war and as peacetime diplomatic symbols. USS Iowa BB-61 was decommissioned for the last time on October 26, 1990, and struck from the US Naval Registry on March 17, 2006. Since 2012 Battleship Iowa has been serving our nation as a Museum of Naval History in San Pedro, CA. The next USS Iowa SSN-797, a Virginia Class Fast Attack Submarine, had her keel laid in September 2019.