Well, for the first time in nearly a quarter century, the nation's most decorated battleship will be on the move.

Battleship New Jersey is preparing for a trip down the Delaware later this month, leaving its spot along the Camden waterfront, heading to the same dock in the Philadelphia Navy Yard, where it was built in 1940.

Don't worry, though, it's not staying there.

It's all part of a long overdue maintenance and repairs needed on the Navy's famed ship.

Ted Goldberg hopped on board today for a tour before it makes its once in a generation journey.

When you step onto the battleship New Jersey, it's a bit more explosive than your usual history lesson.

That's cool and a good deal louder before the famous battleship leaves for Philadelphia for long awaited repairs.

Folks showed us around from the decks five inch guns.

They're the most popular naval weapon of the 20th century.

So you're going to see them on big ships and small ships and aircraft carriers and destroyers and little Coast Guard cutters and battleships and everybody in between because they can do everything.

We can use them against airplanes.

The ships shoot down 20 planes with our five inch guns and our smaller any aircraft battery.

They can also shoot other ships.

To slightly quieter settings.

Well, come on into our captain's cabin.

Tour guide Libby Jones has worked for this floating museum for more than five years.

Watch your step getting in.

You can sit in the chairs.

You can push the button.

The battleship.

New Jersey has a half century of wartime experience fighting in World War Two, Vietnam and the Persian Gulf.

With plenty of weaponry aboard.

Some of those keys say nuclear permission to fire.

Now, of course, the Navy will neither confirm nor deny the presence of nuclear weapons aboard their ships.

However, they did leave us the keys.

The history lessons will soon be paused as the battleship leaves in two weeks to drydock in Philadelphia.

It'll be the first time in more than 30 years that this ship will be taken out of the water for repairs and a new paint shop with a $10 million price tag.

My perspective, as you know, I sort of view the ships returning to New Jersey as sort of a refresh for us, taking that amount of enthusiasm that we've seen from folks who are interested in here and helping us to sort of push forward when we return in order to reinvigorate tourism and visitation.

Battleship New Jersey CEO Marshall Spivak acknowledges that these repairs are happening during the ship's busy season, but he says the longer they wait, the more expensive repairs become.

Leaders join today's tour to explain how important this ship is for Camden's tourism industry and Camden itself.

And when you have something like this here as a as part of tourism, this builds confidence and trust in the city of Camden, the community.

It builds confidence in our kids.

It builds confidence in our residents to know that people from far and wide come here to our city, to our community to visit.

If you Google tourism in Camden, the battleship is the number one tourist destination of the aquarium.

May not want to hear that.

Other locations may not want to hear that.

But here on the battleship that is certainly something to to take note.

Philadelphia is where the ship was originally built in 1942.

And if you want to see the repairs as they happen, you can check them out on the battleships YouTube page.

As we move on and as the ship is there, there will be quite a bit of content from us.

You're going to there's going to be so much content, you're not going to know what to do with yourself that that I can guarantee you.

The battleship looks a little different now than normal.

The radar tower is gone and so is part of the top mast.

So the battleship can fit underneath the Walt Whitman Bridge.

Dry docking itself takes about 60 days.

So it'll be a while until the ship is back in New Jersey.

Waters giving historical tours.

With the radar tower intact in Camden.

I'm Ted Goldberg.

NJ Spotlight News.