USS Missouri

USS Missouri, known as the "Mighty Mo", was the last battleship ever commissioned by the United States and now lies at Ford Island in Pearl Harbor as a museum ship. An Iowa-class battleship completed in 1944, she is 270 metres long, with nine 16-inch guns in three turrets. She fought at Iwo Jima and Okinawa and bombarded the Japanese home islands. Off Okinawa in April 1945 a kamikaze aircraft hit the ship; the resulting fire was quickly put out and the damage was superficial.

Her place in history was secured on 2 September 1945 in Tokyo Bay. On her quarterdeck, Japanese representatives led by Foreign Minister Mamoru Shigemitsu signed the Instrument of Surrender before General Douglas MacArthur and Allied commanders, formally ending the Second World War. That deck is the heart of any visit.

Missouri's career did not end there. She fought in the Korean War, was mothballed in 1955, then was reactivated and modernised in the 1980s with cruise missiles and new electronics. In 1991, during the Gulf War, she fired Tomahawk missiles and her 16-inch guns against Iraqi forces — the first time those guns had been fired in combat since Korea. She was finally decommissioned in 1992 and donated in 1998 to the USS Missouri Memorial Association, opening as a museum in January 1999.

The mooring is symbolic. Missouri lies on Battleship Row about 460 metres from the USS Arizona Memorial, so the ship where the war ended looks toward the ship whose destruction on 7 December 1941 brought the United States into it; her bow faces the Arizona as if keeping watch. Aboard, visitors walk the decks, stand beneath the massive gun turrets, and explore restored areas of the superstructure including the bridge, chart house and captain's sea cabin.

Getting there

The ship is on Ford Island, inside the Pearl Harbor naval complex on Oahu, about 1.6 km from the base's main facilities and about 6 km from Daniel K. Inouye International Airport (HNL) in Honolulu. Visitors cannot drive onto Ford Island: according to the museum, a free shuttle runs from the Pearl Harbor Visitor Center roughly every 15 minutes, and you should allow about 30 minutes each way. The visitor centre is also the starting point for the USS Arizona Memorial and the Pearl Harbor Aviation Museum.