New interactive exhibit opens Sunday onboard Battleship Iowa in San Pedro

Ever wonder what it’s like to be a U.S. sailor?

Or how the nation’s great ships served through the ages?

A new exhibit onboard the Battleship Iowa Museum — also home to the National Museum of the Surface Navy — will debut Sunday, May 24, marking the formal opening of the national museum on the historic World War II battleship in San Pedro and celebrating the nation’s 250th birthday.

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The designation made the Iowa the first and only museum in the nation dedicated to the men and women who have served in the surface forces of the U.S. Navy. The Surface Navy comprises all personnel who have traveled on the ocean’s surface since the nation’s founding.

The Iowa’s immersive “Life of a Sailor” display, the product of two years’ research and work, is laid out amid several areas below the ship’s main deck and aims to bring to life the U.S. Navy, its sailors and its storied history through 250 years.

With the story beginning in 1776, the idea is to let visitors not just see but to actually experience what it was (and is) like, said David Canfield of the ship’s staff who helped design much of it. Canfield served as a diesel mechanic onboard the ship from 1987-89.

The goal is to help people understand that a ship isn’t just a “chunk of steel,” Canfield said. Once the stories begin to unfold about the people who have built and served on them, the ships themselves come alive, he said.

With interactive screen and physical displays, images of real-life personalities and audio help tell the story. From the first “Get off the bus!” shock of enlistment, visitors will experience how sailors survive boot camp and begin to learn the skills of their trade. Voice, film, lifelike cutout figures and simulations combine to unfurl the story of life at sea.

The Great Ships Wall is a crown jewel of the exhibit, displaying Navy ships enhanced with digital information and visuals to help visitors become immersed in the experience.

Working with American Scenic Design and Pure Imagination Studios, the project will see its first public tours launch on Sunday, May 24.

A formal ribbon cutting also is being planned once Fleet Week is over.

The new display also is part of the larger expansion envisioned to open in 2027 next to the USS Iowa at 250 S. Harbor Blvd. that will include a landside area with a community building and a Freedom of the Seas Pavilion.

While the Navy is best known for its wartime feats, it originally — and still — primarily has the mission of securing the oceans for free trade, commerce and passage.

“We have a story to tell, and it is a very important story,” Canfield said.

The goal in creating the new $3.5 million interactive exhibit, he added, has been always to “get the bones right” so it is not a static layout but one that goes deeper and can be expanded and built upon.

Battleship Iowa Director of Sales and Marketing Hall Delano Roosevelt II — the great-grandson of former President Franklin D. Roosevelt, who famously was a guest on the ship during World War II — said bringing those stories to life is always the aim.

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The result, he said, is that it’s “not just a glass case you’re reading on a wall.”

Tours will be open during Iowa hours: 10 a.m. to 5 p.m. (last entry at 4 p.m.) daily, except for Christmas Day and Thanksgiving Day. Access involves traversing two flights of ladder-like steps on the ship, but lifts are available.

The museum is included in the overall adult general admission to the Iowa, which is $29.95.

Meanwhile, Saturday was the second day of the 10th annual L.A. Fleet Week that featured the popular Galley Wars competition, a hot dog eating contest and ship tours.

Booths are set up throughout the expo area next to the USS Iowa, including one featuring underwater divers who interact with the public.

U.S. Navy construction mechanic Randall Fernandez was overseeing the popular display that was attracting youngsters who would play games of tic-tac-toe drawing on the glass between them and the divers who work in underwater construction and salvage.

Several fly-over air demonstrations drew audiences who stopped to watch, and Saturday night featured a concert that was sponsored by the San Pedro Chamber of Commerce.

And during this 250th national birthday, more than a few people were curious enough about their own family’s histories with the founding of the United States that they stopped at side-by-side booths operated by the Daughters and Sons of the American Revolution, where representatives offered tips on doing ancestral research.

The weather this year has been cool for the popular festival that draws tens of thousands of visitors.

L.A. Fleet Week continues through 5 p.m. Monday along the Port of Los Angeles waterfront.

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