Whatever happened to ... retired battleship Iowa?

The decks have been cleared to turn the retired battleship Iowa into a naval museum on Mare Island in Vallejo, Calif.

Last month, the Navy declared that there was only one viable candidate to receive the mothballed man-o'-war, the Historic Ships Memorial at Pacific Square.

And so the Iowa, the lead ship in its World War II class of dreadnoughts, will be the last of the group to enter the tourist trade. It will eventually be opened to the public at a pier in a historic naval shipyard 30 miles from San Francisco.

The Iowa first made history in 1943, ferrying President Franklin D. Roosevelt to the Tehran Conference where he met with British Prime Minister Winston Churchill and Soviet leader Joseph Stalin.

The 887-foot-long ship served in both the Atlantic and Pacific campaigns of World War II, earning nine battle stars.

It was mothballed, then recommissioned for the Korean conflict, earning another two battle stars, and brought back into service again in 1984, joining the Atlantic Fleet out of Norfolk.

On April 19, 1989, while the ship was participating in a gunnery exercise off Puerto Rico, the middle turret of its 16-inch guns exploded, killing 47 sailors inside.

The cause of the disaster has never been determined. An initial report by the Navy, concluding that a despondent sailor set it off as a murder-suicide, was overturned after a long campaign by his family produced evidence that the blast could have been an accident.

Turret Number 2 was never repaired, but the ship made one more deployment before being decommissioned in 1990. It was maintained as part of the reserve fleets in Philadelphia and Rhode Island before being towed to San Francisco and mothballed at Suisan Bay.

The Historic Ships Memorial still has to complete its fund raising campaign, submit evidence of firm financing, clear environmental checklists and finish site leasing negotiations before the Navy will move on donating the Iowa, according to a statement by the Naval Seas Systems Command.

But the Navy already has ruled out the two competing applications. One was from a foundation that wanted to make the Iowa a museum in Stockton, Calif. The Navy said that applicant had not provided evidence of an available mooring location. The other was a sponsor that wanted to dock the ship in San Francisco but withdrew its proposal in February.

That left the Mare Island group as the only qualified applicant for the ship, which made its final deployments out of Norfolk Naval Station.

There's no chance for another group to enter the fray, according to Patricia Kay Dolan, a spokeswoman for the Navy.

"We've gone through the competitive donation process," she said. "So now we're in really the same situation as with the Wisconsin. There is one candidate, and the Navy will work with that candidate to give them an opportunity to fulfill the financial aspect."

The battleship Wisconsin is docked at the Nauticus National Maritime Center, where it has been in a semi-retired state, open for above-deck tours and maintained by the Navy in a status that would permit it to be remobilized if necessary.

The Navy has already decided to donate the Wisconsin to Norfolk, clearing the way for full access by visitors. Some environmental steps need to be completed, the Navy said, before title can be transferred to the city.

The other two Iowa-class ships are also museums. The New Jersey is on display in Camden, helping to anchor the waterfront there, and the Missouri is an attraction at Ford Island in Hawaii.

Tony Germanotta, (757) 222-5113, tony.germanotta@pilotonline.com