The first new Turkish MILGEM-class corvette, the TCG Heybeliada (pictured here), was commissioned into service on 27 September. The MILGEM national corvette program is the first modern warship class to be produced and designed domestically in Turkey; the ship’s commissioning provides an important boost and marks a major milestone for the country’s navy and shipbuilding industry. Constructed by the Istanbul Naval Shipyard, the 325-foot Heybeliada displaces 2,000 tons fully loaded and is armed with Harpoon antiship missiles, rolling airframe missiles for air defense, a 76-mm gun, and torpedo tubes. The ship also carries a Seahawk multipurpose naval helicopter. The class’s second unit, the Büyükada, was launched on the same day that the Heybeliada was commissioned, and is expected to enter service in 2013. Up to ten additional units eventually may be built for the Turkish navy.
On 1 November Bulgaria decommissioned its final Romeo-class submarine, the Slava, and with her retired its navy’s celebrated submarine service. The Slava was one of four boats that were originally transferred from the Soviet Union during the cold war. Though never a major submarine operator, Bulgaria had an undersea service that nonetheless could trace its roots back to World War I. Retirement of its last submarine was largely an administrative matter, since the Slava had been considered inactive since around 2000. Displacing 1,300 tons surfaced and 1,700 tons submerged, the Slava was armed with eight 533-mm torpedo tubes and could carry 14 torpedoes or 24 mines. With the retirement of Bulgaria’s submarine fleet, the only Romeo-class submarines remaining in service belong to China, North Korea, and the Egyptian Navy, which operates four Romeo-class submarines, including number 849, pictured here.
On 28 October the historic battleship Iowa (BB-61) began the next step of her transition from a mothballed man-of-war to an interactive museum ship. The 50,000-ton Iowa was escorted by the U.S. Coast Guard from the Suisun Bay National Defense Reserve Fleet at Benicia, California, and towed by commercial tugboats to Richmond, California. She is being refurbished there into a museum ship that will be moored at Los Angeles and is slated to open for visitors beginning mid-2012. Commissioned in 1943 and decommissioned in 1990, the Iowa remained on the Navy Vessel Registry list until 2006. She is the only ship of the Iowa class that has not yet been turned into a floating museum. Sister Missouri (BB-63) is preserved as a museum at Pearl Harbor, Hawaii; the Wisconsin (BB-64) is at the Nauticus Museum in Norfolk, Virginia; and the New Jersey (BB-62) is located in Camden, New Jersey. According to federal law, ships of the class must remain in good condition so that in the event of an extended national crisis in which their 16-inch guns are again required, they could still be refurbished and returned to active duty.