Iowa Class Battleship -

The Iowa Class Battleships were 4 battleships built between 1939 and 1942. These ships were ordered by the United States Government in 1939 to be the escort vessels for the fast carrier task forces that would operate and control the bulk of the Pacific during World War II. The original order was placed for 6 ships but, in a gigantic waste of money, metal, and man hours, two were canceled before completion and scrapped. These Goliath blow-your-ass-out-of-the-water mean machines were commissioned on February 22, 1943 where they began an impressive career through the end of the century, to retire from service in March of 2006. While we could not locate an exact price for the ship construction at the time, a time when Coca-Cola cost a nickel, bread a penny, and your uncle walked 5 miles uphill both ways to school, Consumerist estimates that with inflation factored in, each vessel would have cost approximately 1.8 billion dollars. That makes the total cost for the four ships roughly in the neighborhood of 7.4 billion dollars