For more than a decade one or another group has tried to raise money and win the Navy’s approval to establish a USS Iowa floating museum in the Bay Area—first in San Francisco, and, for the last several years, in Vallejo. Game over. The Navy has decided the historic ship that brought FDR home from the Tehran conference in 1943 and which has languished for years in the mothball fleet at Benicia is going to Southern California. AP says that after it undergoes rehab it will be installed at the Port of Los Angeles as a permanent floating museum and memorial to battleships.
Noted: You may recall the Board of Supervisors’ 8-3 vote in 2005 against making the Iowa a tourist attraction at Fisherman’s Wharf—an idea championed by Sen. Dianne Feinstein.
