Visitors to the Battleship Iowa Museum may notice right away just how busy the ship and her surroundings are. Berthed in the perpetually bustling Port of Los Angeles, the “Mighty I” (known to more recent veterans as “The Big Stick”)—all 887 feet, 3 inches—is almost dwarfed by the scale of life moving about her.
The neighboring terminals’ freighters and cruise ships carrying vacationers pass the ship by, while the cargo yard’s cranes loom over her in the distance, their booms raised in a perpetual salute. Trucks and trains carrying cargoes bound to and arriving from overseas swirl about the area and over the Vincent Thomas Bridge. Visitors will find an equally lively and engrossing museum ship.
The USS Iowa (BB-61) was one of the largest and also one of the last battleships built. For decades battleships were the capital ships of the world’s navies. By the time the Iowa and her sisters were commissioned in 1943 and 1944, however, the battleship era was well on its way out. The Iowa began her career in the Atlantic, where she ferried President Franklin D. Roosevelt to Oran, Algeria, the first leg of his trip to the Tehran Conference; visitors to the ship can still view a bathtub specially fitted for the paralyzed President. After completing that journey, the Iowa spent time in the Pacific, participating in Marshall Island campaigns, and was present for Japan’s surrender in Tokyo Bay on 2 September 1945.
As a potent symbol of American might, the Iowa was modernized and upgraded throughout her long and storied career, first when she was brought out of reserve for gunfire support in Korea in 1951 (when she fired twice as many rounds as she did in all of World War II), and later when she was reactivated again in the 1980s. Following her infamous turret explosion in 1989 that killed 47 sailors near Puerto Rico, the Iowa was cocooned up just as she was and mothballed in Suisun Bay in northern California, her damaged main turret still not entirely rebuilt from the explosion.
Efforts by an extremely dedicated core group of volunteers from the Pacific Battleship Center to secure the ship as a museum culminated on 26 May 2012, when the Iowa was finally towed to her berth in the Port of Los Angeles. When she first opened for tours at her permanent home on 7 July, visitors could see a battleship that was virtually the same as when she was sealed up in 1990. Name tags still adorn doors to quarters, and documents such as instructions for using the M-14 rifle and how to address a fuel spill from her Harpoon missile system—part of her 1980s refit—still hang on equipment sides and corridor walls. Manuals and memos were still on board when the refurbishment crew boarded in preparation for her transfer; most are now part of the ship’s growing archives and research center.
But it is the little touches of everyday life on board the Iowa that may make the greatest impression on a visitor. Bumper stickers and pictures are still displayed in the berthing area. Telephones remain in place. A menu appears on the galley’s bulletin board, while notices are posted in the library—where the young sailor Bernie Kopell, who later played “Doc” on the TV series The Love Boat, served as the librarian from 1956 to 1957. The ship looks, smells, and even sounds (sans the hum of the engines) like she must have when last commissioned.
Part of the vessel’s remarkable preservation is owed to the National Defense Authorization Act for Fiscal Year 2006, which specifies that both the Iowa and her sister the Wisconsin (BB-64) could be reactivated in the event of a national emergency. The Iowa was thus never officially demilitarized.
But the larger credit is owed to the energetic group of 40 paid staff and a large crew of volunteers whose hard work has transformed “the Big Stick” into a learning and community center. Some are former veterans who have found an opportunity to share their experiences with visitors; others were brought there by a higher calling; still others, like the ship’s curator Dave Way, did not serve but have brought their dedication and life experiences to bear to bring the story of the Iowa and those who served on board her to life.
Volunteers could be seen actively engaged at almost every turn. From the galley to the flight deck (on which helicopters still land on occasion), the people of the Iowa were accommodating, friendly, and knowledgeable—whether they were explaining the memorial for the men killed in the turret explosion, adjusting displays in the officer’s wardroom, or replacing deteriorated wood decking with new teak planks. (Visitors may purchase sections of the old decking in the gift shop.)
The bright and sunny day I visited the Iowa, I was met on the gangway by museum curator Dave Way as well as Stephen Burke of the experimental technology company Guru, which has partnered with the museum and developed the Battleship Iowa application for mobile devices. No visit to the Iowa would be complete without experiencing the Guru mobile app. Visitors can hold in their hands a “personalized V.I.P. tour,” in the words of one museum staff member, which permits one to view the ship in as much or as little detail as he or she chooses. I found myself drawn to the many interviews with those who served on board the Iowa, and reading about the areas of the ship I toured. It even offers a type of “augmented reality” in which, holding a phone at a certain location, one can—among other things—“fire” the main battery.
In one of its most laudable features, the app also allows visitors to “tour” areas of the ship closed for safety reasons, such as inside the main turrets, where a video team suited-up in protective respirators and clambered down narrow ladders to give a visitor the next best thing to being inside. The constantly updated app is a decided benefit to an already positive experience.
Adjacent to the San Pedro neighborhood, right off the Harbor Freeway, the Battleship Iowa Museum is a fantastic place to spend a day or more. The museum is located near numerous other maritime attractions such as the SS Lane Victory and the RMS Queen Mary, and is well worth the price of admission, which comes in a variety of rates and packages—including one sold with tickets to the Queen Mary, and one with a Los Angeles waterfront cruise.
Mr. Hoppe is the digital assets administrator at the U.S. Naval Institute. Before he turned to library and information science as a profession, his background was in the world of museums, history, and art conservation and restoration. He still researches and restores antiques in his spare time.
Battleship Iowa Museum
Pacific Battleship Center
250 South Harbor BoulevardBerth 87Los Angeles, CA 90731
877-446-9261
http://www.pacificbattleship.com/
Hours:
Open daily from 1000 to 1700, with last admission sold at 1600. Closed Thanksgiving and Christmas.
Admission: $19.95; $16.95 seniors and active/retired/reserve military (with ID); $11.95 children (6-11); free for children under 6.
Parking is available at the Port of Los Angeles for $8. Public transportation via the Los Angeles Metro’s Silver Line also is available.
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Contact us at: [email protected].
The Battleship Iowa App: Relevance with Honor
The first thing you should know about the Battleship Iowa app is that it is not an app per se; rather, it is a handheld, self-paced, audiovisual tour enhancement that is hosted on a mobile device.
The second thing you should know is that the app is not designed to replace docents, volunteers, interpretive signage, or any other of the museum’s more human touches or functions. Instead, it is designed to be a mobile learning companion and to augment existing content—to provide another point of entry for active engagement, exploration, and understanding of the Iowa and her proud heritage.
Mobile applications such as the Battleship Iowa app are a fairly recent development in the museum world. Their genesis dates back to the portable audio tours of earlier decades. The first mobile apps were introduced by museums only in 2009. By 2010 the app market had taken off. The first apps were largely presentations—guided tours to permanent installations and temporary exhibitions.
While the museum-ship industry is not particularly known for being quick to adapt to a changing technological world, the Iowa Museum, which opened in 2012, saw an opportunity to integrate mobile technology in its museum experience from the very beginning.
Several options existed. The museum could have invested in its own portable devices and support equipment, as at the USS Midway Museum in San Diego, but that requires significant costs not just in the equipment itself but also in continuing maintenance of that infrastructure and device inventory. So the Battleship Iowa Museum instead contracted with Guru (www.theguru.co) to design a custom mobile application. The company is self-described as “digital storytellers who use mobile technology to bring historical locations to life.”
Technically speaking, the “choose-your-own device” nature of a mobile app offers both benefits and challenges. While users are more familiar with their own personal devices than they would be a custom museum device, the infrastructure must be put into place to support mobile users. At the Iowa, the staff wished to make the mobile-tour experience interactive and dynamic based on one’s location on the ship, rather than forcing visitors to follow a set route. That meant the installation of Wi-Fi and Bluetooth waypoint beacons throughout the ship and a good deal of fine-tuning, as steel bulkheads and floors are very good at attenuating the radio signals from the network. The museum offers free Wi-Fi.
But the most important aspect of the app is the user experience. The Guru team embedded with the Iowa staff and volunteers to understand the ship, her people, and their mission so that the company could build an app that would go beyond dry facts and figures, and would help keep the Iowa relevant to the smartphone generation while honoring the ship’s legacy.
Guru developed a multitiered approach to bring the ship to life. Scriptwriters, videographers, and content developers worked with museum staff to craft their vision for the app. It presents information in three distinct levels of depth. Items in each section of the tour route are numbered, and users can pull up information about these items to learn more about them.
Users also can explore the ship by topical themes (such as the construction of the Iowa) and by eras of her history. Historical Images and videos of historical events and interviews with veterans are featured. Also included is a novel “augmented reality” feature. At several points on board the ship, a smartphone user can see an historical image blended into their current view and—what I found to be particularly fun—“fire” her main battery. App users can “favorite” content they wish to remember and view later at home, and they can share images and other materials to social media sites.
Guru provided on-site training to Iowa staff and volunteers. Since the app debuted in October 2015, the reaction has been largely positive. Guru continues to provide updates to content and fine-tune the beacon system. Mike Getscher, the museum’s executive vice president and chief operating officer, notes that updating digital content is quicker and less expensive than having to frequently update museum signage, with the associated printing and production costs.
The Battleship Iowa app is available for free in the Apple App Store and in Google Play. Guru also has made versions of the app in Spanish, Japanese, and Chinese.
Currently, only about a quarter of museum visitors use the app; whether that is due to a psychological barrier to having to download the application to their device, or simply because they are not aware of it, is unknown. The museum is encouraging visitors to download the app, and this author attests to its utility and to the positive experience it provided on the tour.
New technologies do not necessarily have to displace tried-and-true museum practices and the people behind them, but when integrated into the museum-going experience they can be well-leveraged to engage audiences who might otherwise pass them by.