USS Missouri (BB-63) was the last of the four Iowa-class battleships and entered service in June 1944, just a few months after being launched at the New York Naval Shipyard in Brooklyn. She arrived in the Pacific in time for the last major operations against Japan, bombing targets on Iwo Jima and Okinawa and escorting the aircraft carriers of Task Force 38 in the final attacks on the Japanese archipelago. Its most remembered moment came on September 2, 1945, when its deck hosted the signing of Japan's unconditional surrender act that ended World War II. The "Big Mo" did not retire after the war: it entered combat again during the Korean War bombing North Korean positions, and after years in reserve it was modernized in the 1980s to serve again, this time in the 1991 Gulf War. This model re.
