USS Missouri at War

The USS Missouri was the last of ten battleships completed in the early 1940s, and the last battleship to be commissioned in the U.S. Navy. From the time she was commissioned in the next-to-last year of the Pacific War, on January 29, 1944, she was considered a cut above the others. In 1945 alone, "Mighty Mo" escorted the Pacific Fleet's fast carrier force to the launch point ofthe first airstrikes against Japan since the famed Doolittle raid in 1942; supported the Iwo Jima invasion landings; and bombarded Okinawa, repelling a dozen daylight raids and four night attacks in the process. During that year, she also survived a kamikaze hit, launched a hunter-killer operation that sank a Japanese submarine, and bombarded Kyushu and several industrial targets on the Japanese home islands. Something even greater was in store a short time later. The date was September 2, 1945. Imperial Japan had been compelled to surrender by the dropping of the Hiroshima and Nagasaki bombs and the threat of more atomic terror to come. Anchored in Tokyo Bay, the Missouri culminated her wartime service by hosting the surrender ceremonies between the Allied powers and the Empire of Japan. Before the ink was dry on the parchment, the news was flashed to an anxious public. A global war that had begun half a world away with the German invasion of Poland on September 1, 1939, had finally drawn to a close, and the name of the Missouri was on the lips of people the world over. Soon, the famous battleship would arrive back in America to a hero's welcome. After being called upon again to fight in the Korean War, she was decommissioned into the U.S. Navy reserve fleets. She was reactivated and modernized in 1984, and participated in the 1991 Gulf War. Missouri was decommissioned a final time on March 31, 1992, having earned a total of eleven battle stars for service in World War II, Korea, and the Persian Gulf. She was maintained on the Naval Vessel Register until January 1995.Bonner, Kit is the author of 'USS Missouri at War', published 2008 under ISBN 9780760332191 and ISBN 0760332193.