Key Points and Summary – The Korean War pulled all four Iowa-class battleships—Missouri, New Jersey, Iowa, and Wisconsin—back into combat, where their 16-inch guns devastated Chinese and North Korean positions, cave complexes, artillery, and command nodes as far as 20 miles inland.
-Missouri supported the Inchon landings; later, the class’ sustained bombardment turned swaths of coastline into a no-go zone for enemy forces.
Iowa-Class Battleship Secondary Guns. Image Credit: Harry J. Kazianis/National Security Journal.
Iowa-Class Battleship National Security Journal Visit from August 2025. Image Credit: Harry J. Kazianis.
-Constraints remained: thick minefields, hostile shore batteries, and the decision to keep Des Moines-class cruisers in other theaters.
-With more minesweeping, cruiser reinforcement, and focused air strikes on coastal guns, their impact might have been greater. Even so, the Iowas proved big-gun naval power still mattered.
Iowa-class Battleships Returned to Dominance in the Korean War.
Sometimes in the U.S. Navy, there is no substitute for massive firepower, and to get it, you must move players from the bench to the ballgame and dominate the contest. That’s what happened during the Korean War when all four Iowa-class battleships were on active duty to shell the daylights out of North Korean and Chinese troops to tip the balance during the conflict.
The battleships USS Iowa, USS New Jersey, and USS Wisconsin joined the party with the USS Missouri to punish enemy troops and destroy military infrastructure. This bombardment made for some of the biggest shelling ever executed by the Navy during the Korean War.
The 16-inch guns roared to life, bringing the noise to the enemy and forcing them to pay. This went on for three years.
USS Missouri Was Placed Correctly for the Counter-Attack
The mission started in 1950 when the USS Missouri was already on active duty in the Korean theater. The North Koreans had delivered their massive invasion in the South, and the Navy was as surprised as the Army.
Thankfully, the Missouri was there during the great counterstrike at Inchon, where it prepped the landing zone for the critical amphibious attack that the North Koreans never saw coming.
However, China had its own designs on the Korean Peninsula with a blistering counter-attack of its own. The Missouri transferred up the Korean peninsula in waters off the North Korean coast to put the fear of God in the Chinese hordes.
Iowa-Class 16-Inch Shell Menu. Image Credit: National Security Journal.
16-Inch Iowa-Class Guns. Image Credit: National Security Journal.
USS Iowa 16-Inch Guns National Security Journal Photo. Taken August 15, 2025 By Harry J. Kazianis.
The Navy Faced a Difficult Operational Decision
The Navy then had a choice to make. It could redeploy heavily armed cruisers from the Middle East and the European theater.
These Des Moines-class warships had powerful auto-loading 8-inch guns that could do significant amounts of damage, too.
However, this would leave those waters open to the Soviet Union. The Des Moines-class was considered too valuable to move to the Korean Peninsula and leave the Cold War flanks vulnerable.
That meant it was time to go big or go home. The three Iowa-class battleships were activated. Spoiling for a fight, they did not disappoint the Navy. By August 1951, New Jersey, Iowa, and Wisconsin were in the Korean area of operations and started blasting away. Each of the four Iowa-class battleships also served as flagships at different times during the war.
Time To Attack and Start Breaking the Enemy’s Will to Fight
The 16-inch and 5-inch guns soon went to work and the North Koreans and Chinese had to duck their heads. The enemy troops were hiding in caves and the battleships destroyed those positions. There were also command and control centers. Those went up in smoke. The Chinese and North Koreans had artillery pieces in fortified bunkers. The Iowa-class made mincemeat at of those emplacements. Anything 20 miles from the coastline that the enemy tried to utilize against American soldiers and marines were fair game.
Another excellent development was the handiwork of Navy aviation. The naval pilots achieved air superiority over the battleships and that helped protect them.
However, there were sea mines to worry about and the North Koreans and Chinese were able to limit navigation in the waters that were protected by mines. Another area denial tactic was to use shore-based artillery against the battleships and this affected some level of performance.
The Iowa-class Would Not Be Left Out of the Fight
But the Iowa-class commanders were not intimidated. They continued to shell and destroy targets when they could despite the limited access to other waters around North Korea. The mission was to send scare tactics to the enemy so they would not want to come near the coastline.
USS New Jersey Full Profile Battleship. Image Credit: National Security Journal.
USS New Jersey July 2025. Image Credit: National Security Journal.
USS New Jersey 16-Inch Guns. Image Credit: National Security Journal.
USS New Jersey National Security Journal Photo by Stephen Silver.
The battleships were a symbol of military might that had some psychological effect against the enemy.
The sound of the shells whistling in and blasting targets was enough for the North Koreans and Chinese to avoid the range of the big guns. This created better morale among American sailors in what was turning into a war of attrition and stalemate.
Time to Play Armchair Admiral
Had I been in command, I would have made some different decisions. I would have moved the Des Moines-class cruisers to the Korean theater to grant more firepower. I would have also sent minesweepers into the waters that were creating no-go areas of the ocean.
Then I would have attacked the enemy artillery that was dug in along the coastline with warplanes. This would have given the Iowa-class battleships free reign up and down the coast. The cruisers could have protected flanks of the strike group and the Iowa-class would have enjoyed an even better war.
Nevertheless, the Iowa-class dreadnoughts acquitted themselves well in the shore bombardment role. The enemy knew they couldn’t operate that close to the coastline, and the North Koreans and Chinese lost many men to battleship shelling.
The four battleships of the Iowa-class were sent back to reserve duty by 1958. They could have been more decisive with a better plan to defeat anti-access tactics by the bad guys.
The Navy could have made the Iowa-class more of a factor in the war by mitigating the sea mine problem and targeting coastal guns with strike aircraft. We’ll never know if that would have helped the battleships’ performance.
However, this deployment demonstrated that the Iowa-class could still play a role during the Cold War and the fight to prevent East Asian countries from falling to communism.
The Iowa-class should go down in history as ships that could make a difference when called upon, and the sailors who served on board were daring and brave. They were just what the Navy needed against the North Koreans and Chinese.
About the Author: Brent M. Eastwood
Brent M. Eastwood, PhD is the author of Don’t Turn Your Back On the World: a Conservative Foreign Policy and Humans, Machines, and Data: Future Trends in Warfare plus two other books. Brent was the founder and CEO of a tech firm that predicted world events using artificial intelligence. He served as a legislative fellow for US Senator Tim Scott and advised the senator on defense and foreign policy issues. He has taught at American University, George Washington University, and George Mason University. Brent is a former US Army Infantry officer. He can be followed on X @BMEastwood.
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