USS Iowa is a large battleship of the US Navy, equipped with up to 9 406 mm caliber guns installed in the ship’s 3 main turrets, which are capable of firing nuclear bullets.

The battleship USS Iowa was once the largest warship of the US Navy. With a length of 271 m, a width of 33 m at its widest point and a draft of 11 m, USS Iowa has a displacement of 58,000 tons and a maximum speed of 35 nautical miles (65 km/h).

USS Iowa is equipped with 9 guns.
The ship is equipped with 4 turbines and 8 boilers, producing 212,000 horsepower. USS Iowa also carries nearly 10 million liters of fuel, so it can travel 24,000 km at a speed of 15 knots during a single voyage.

The turrets have a thickness of 0.5 m steel.
USS Iowa is equipped with an extremely powerful weapons array with 9 406 mm caliber guns mounted in 3 main turrets with the thickness of each turret being 0.5 m. The weight of each tower is 1,200 tons. Accordingly, the 406 mm gun can fire steel-piercing bullets weighing 1.2 tons with an operating range of 37 km. It is one of the largest guns ever mounted on a warship.

A halo of fire lit up the entire sea when USS Iowa opened fire.

USS Iowa is also designed with a second-class artillery battery consisting of 20 127 mm guns and mounted in twin turrets. After being recommissioned and rearmed in 1982, USS Iowa was supplemented with modern weapons such as 32 Tomahawk cruise missiles, 16 Harpoon anti-ship missiles and 4 6-barrel Phalanx CIWS close-range defense systems. 20 mm, along with radars for air defense, sea surface detection and weapons control.

Vibration zone at sea due to the force of the guns on the USS Iowa.
However, when all 9 cannons fire at the same time, they will create a chaotic shock wave phenomenon, causing the bullet’s flight path to not be as accurate as expected. Therefore, experts solved this problem by letting the cannons fire one after another independently.

USS Iowa can fire nuclear bullets.
According to sploid.gizmodo, the Iowa warships are the only generation of ships in the US Navy capable of firing nuclear bullets. This type of bullet is called W23 – a version of the W19 nuclear artillery shell designed specifically for 406 mm guns, with a destructive power equivalent to 15 – 20 thousand tons of TNT.
Warships are out of date
USS Iowa was present in the Pacific during World War II. However, people quickly realized that its heyday had passed. Instead, generations of aircraft carriers along with fighters and bombers quickly became powerful forces dominating the sea.

USS Iowa was retired by the US military in the 90s.
Therefore, in 1943, the US military decided to cancel the plan to build two more Montana-class battleships with a tonnage of 65,000 tons equipped with 12 406 mm caliber guns. The Montana-class warship is the successor to the Iowa surface warship.

Close-up of the guns on the USS Iowa firing.
By the 1990s, the Iowa-class warships were retired by the US Navy. However, the four surface ships including USS Iowa, USS New Jersey, USS Missouri and USS Wisconsin are still considered the most powerful war fleets ever used for several decades. The US military has even allowed them to be re-commissioned several times after being decommissioned.