USS Missouri (BB-63) is not remembered within the pages of naval battle history as a battleship, but as an American ambassador of perseverance, creativity, and heritage on the oceans of the world. She was built during the later years of World War II in the Brooklyn Navy Yard, and she was the last of the majestic Iowa-class battleships to ever experience the warmth of the sun’s rays.
With her 887-foot torpedo hull and 212,000 shaft horsepower powerplants, Missouri surpassed the 33-knot mark—faster than any other American battleship, even a few of her more contemporary enemy capital ships. Her name would be a sea name that went back more than one hundred years. Two previous U.S.
Warships had previously been called the Missouri before it, a mid-1800s steam frigate, and a Great White Fleet battleship. But it was BB-63 that would put the name into history. She was commissioned in 1944 and steamed right out to war fronts in the Pacific, whose guns thundered through the Battle of Iwo Jima and Okinawa and pounded the Japanese mainland.
Her hour of definition in service arrived on September 2, 1945. Pier-side at Tokyo Bay, anchored, the Missouri was the setting where the instrument of Japanese surrender, the instrument that brought the official end to the most devastating war in man’s history, was signed. That moment, immortalized and indelibly inscribed on newsreel film, made the battleship a living personification of peace.
Her deck was not only a battlefield, but a stage for closure and rebirth. And even on that last day, the Missouri history would not be complete. She remained in active service after the war, sailing around the Atlantic and reloading her huge guns once more for the Korean War, whose shelling supported United Nations soldiers in the trenches. Retired in 1955, she seemed to be cursed into retirement when, in the 1980s, the Navy brought her back to life through a massive overhaul.
As payment, Missouri was no more than a fuddy-duddy old dowager primping for the prom—she was re-commissioned as a new ship. Equipped with Tomahawk cruise missiles, Harpoon ship-killing missiles, modern radar, and Phalanx missile-defense systems, she was soon to get with the times. She even fired missiles and provided naval gunfire support when she took part in the Gulf War, demonstrating that she was still capable of contributing to history despite being born decades earlier.
At the heart of Missouri’s enduring reputation was its balance of strength and adaptability. Her main battery—nine 16-inch guns—could hurl 2,700-pound shells nearly 23 miles. Her secondary 5-inch guns added protection and versatility.
Sheathed with as much as 17 inches of steel in some areas, she was built to withstand and fight back even more fiercely. She was a fighting machine, but she was also an engineering marvel of mid-20th-century warships. The “Mighty Mo” rests today in Pearl Harbor, Hawaii, near the USS Arizona because it is on the bottom of the harbor.
Both of these vessels carry a sorrowful history—the Arizona of America’s fall into World War II, and the Missouri of its victory. Visitors walking her decks today can feel history beneath their feet, standing in the spot where peace was declared. Her restoration isn’t so much an act of remembrance, however—that’s a commitment to future generations.
She’s maintained by historians, veterinarians, and volunteers as a floating museum, so her history is not just read about in books, but lived. Even independent of Pearl Harbor, Missouri welcomes model-makers to rebuild her from the top of her superstructure to the subdued color of her decks.
The legacy of the USS Missouri is not told by miles or the number of successes won, but the memories she holds. To her sailors who man her, to her families who come aboard today, she remains a part of their lives. At war, at peacekeeping, at living history, the Missouri remains an expression of unyielding American will, of American resilience and strength, and of a history that has something to tell the future.
