This is no surprise to me... I'm living in Okiehoma almost entirely due to the City and County of San Francisco NOT wanting one of the Iowa class ships while they were still in service. Let me explain. Back when all 4 of the Iowa's were freshly reactivated and showing the flag. The US Navy decided that they would base the Missouri in San Francisco. The Gov't owned a large piece of property just south of the city, the site of the former Hunter's Point Naval Shipyard which had closed in the 70's. This expensive ghost town, was to be refurbished as the base of the Mo, along with all of it's support ships and maintenance shops. This would have added several million a year to the tax roles of SF. Not to mention all the jobs it would have provided. Well, the left wing nut jobs got a item on the ballot excluding nuclear weapons from being in the county. Since the Navy will never confirm or deny the possession of "special" weapons, this excluded the ship from being based at Hunter's Point. So the Navy built the Mo a nice new base up at Seattle. The problem is, the Navy holds a grudge. A year later, when they started the BRAC rounds to close unneeded bases... They closed everything bigger than a recruiting station in the San Francisco Bay Area. This included the base that I worked at, which had only a year earlier been acknowledged as being among the most valuable of the bases doing the same sort of work. I had to relocate halfway across the country to find a similar federal job so I can finish my career. The most telling item of the time was a political cartoon I saw. It showed the Mo sailing away from a pier, the pier was covered in cheering hippies with "No Nuke" signs and the aft 3 gun turret had 2 barrels bent to look like someone flipping the bird. They made a huge, huge mistake.
