A History of the Long Beach Naval Shipyard...

[BB62vet]

The book - A History of the Long Beach Naval Shipyard, Roosevelt Base & Reeves Field by Richard A. Landgraff in my opinion is a MUST for modelers of the IOWA class battleship. Mr. Landgraff (who I am in contact with currently and have been since the early '90s) is currently Naval Architect for the Pacific Battleship Group which are the custodians of USS IOWA Museum at L.A. Port Authority. (I hope I got that right!)

This book highlights some 40 years of Mr. Landgraff's involvement at the LB shipyard and goes into great detail to highlight his work on NEW JERSEY, MISSOURI, IOWA, and WISCONSIN thru their various commissions, decommissions, etc. Since I was a member of NEW JERSEY's 1968-69 crew, I am particularly interested in this time frame of the ship's history and Mr. Landgraff has pointed out many facets of the work done on NEW JERSEY at LBNSYD to get her ready for her 1968 deployment. While his tenure at the shipyard included all sorts of other projects, I feel his battleship work was probably his most enjoyable after reading thru the first part of his account.

Most of us (and especially the general public at large) have no clue as to what is involved in bringing a ship back from the reserve fleet into active status. This books really tells the tale of what's involved in the planning, engineering, drafting of new & replacement parts, and procurement of items long out of production and support. I was certainly not aware of the various items of NEW JERSEY that were missing or needed replacement in 1967-68 during her refit in Philadelphia and subsequent final fitting out in Long Beach - but I find this book extremely interesting in it's detail of how, where, and what it took to equip the ship for her 1968 deployment. There is, believe it or not, quite a bit of humor in Mr. Landgraff's style of writing in recounting some of the searches he was involved with both for the 68 and 82 recommissionings of this ship.

Finally, Mr. Landgraff has included many of his personal photos of things, ships, places that were integral to his service and work at the yard. Some of these photos are ones I've never seen before and are a direct help in my current modeling project of NEW JERSEY.

So, I highly recommend this book to anyone who is or plans to model one of the IOWAs - it is a wealth of information (mainly on the technical side of things) that I think would make an excellent addition to a modeler's library. It is a Printed on Demand book available from Amazon.com.

Hank