LOS ANGELES -- The United States Navy announced Tuesday that the last surviving World War II battleship without a home will be heading to the Port of Los Angeles where it will stand as a permanent museum.
The nonprofit Pacific Battleship Center, which has been working to bring the USS Iowa to Los Angeles, beat out the San Francisco Bay area city of Vallejo.
Pacific Battleship Center president Robert Kent says the nearly 900-foot battleship must be rehabilitated in San Francisco Bay before it can be towed down the California coast. He says that could happen sometime later this year, depending on the weather.
The USS Iowa once carried President Franklin Roosevelt across the Atlantic for meetings with British Prime Minister Winston Churchill. The ship was decommissioned in 1990.
The Iowa's sister ships are already serving as museums. The USS Missouri is docked at Pearl Harbor in Hawaii, the USS Wisconsin is docked in Norfolk, Va. and the USS New Jersey is docked in the state it is named for.
The Iowa and the Wisconsin will be maintained to avoid rust and other mechanical problems in the unlikely event the ships are ever needed in war.
The Associated Press contributed to this story.
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