Iowa-class battleship bombarding targets in North Korea

When brought into service during the final years of World War II, the Iowa-class battleships were assigned to operate in the Pacific Theater of World War II. By this point in the war, aircraft carriers had displaced battleships as the primary striking arm of both the United States Navy and the Imperial Japanese Navy. As a result of this shift in tactics, U.S. fast battleships of all classes were relegated to the secondary role of carrier escorts and assigned to the Fast Carrier Task Force to provide anti-aircraft screening for U.S. aircraft carriers and perform shore bombardment. Three were recalled to service in the 1950s with the outbreak of the Korean War, and provided naval artillery support for U.N. forces for the entire duration of the war before being returned to mothballs in 1955 after hostilities ceased.