USS Missouri: Tokyo Bay Surrender, a Chesapeake Grounding and Cher

SPEAKER_1 (0:00)

Imagine a single physical location that served as the stage for the solemn end of World War II, a terrifying bombardment platform in the Gulf War, and well, the highly controversial set of a 1989 Cher music video.

SPEAKER_2 (0:13)

Quite the resume, honestly.

SPEAKER_1 (0:15)

Welcome to the USS Missouri, hole number Bb-63. Today's deep dive into our sources isn't just about a boat.

SPEAKER_2 (0:22)

No, definitely not just a boat.

SPEAKER_1 (0:23)

We are pulling from a massive stack of declassified naval logs, engineering retrospectives, and historical biographies to trace a narrative biography of the last battleship ever commissioned by the United States.

We're looking at the life of the mighty Moe to show you how she survived rapidly changing technologies, shifting global politics, and even a humiliating encounter with some Chesapeake Bay mud. Okay, let's unpack this.

SPEAKER_2 (0:48)

It really is an incredible journey. The Missouri acts as a completely unique lens through which we can view the entire second half of the 20th century.

SPEAKER_1 (0:56)

Yeah.

SPEAKER_2 (0:57)

Because when we trace her life, we aren't just cataloging what this massive ship did. We're interrogating why she was repeatedly called upon time and time again across decades when military conventional wisdom declared battleships completely obsolete.

SPEAKER_1 (1:12)

That contradiction is exactly where we need to start. Because by all accounts, her era was already ending the moment she was born.

SPEAKER_2 (1:19)

Right. The era of the dreadnought was already fading out.

SPEAKER_1 (1:22)

Exactly. The Missouri was an Iowa class fast battleship, ordered in 1940 and commissioned in 1944

To understand her story, you first have to understand her scale, which is frankly hard to wrap your head around.

SPEAKER_2 (1:35)

The scale is just massive.

SPEAKER_1 (1:36)

We're talking about a vessel over 887 feet long. When fully loaded, her displacement was over 57,000 tons.

For anyone not steeped in naval architecture, displacement literally means the sheer weight of the water, the ship's whole has to push out of the way just to stay afloat.

SPEAKER_2 (1:55)

Which, as you can imagine, requires an astronomical amount of power to move. American naval officers had traditionally favored slower, heavily armored battleships, but military planners leading up to the war realized that if they fought Japan in the Pacific, they'd be facing a fast Japanese fleet.

SPEAKER_1 (2:12)

Right, particularly their nimble battle cruisers and aircraft carriers.

SPEAKER_2 (2:17)

Exactly. They needed a ship that could take a massive punch, but still race across the ocean.

So, engineers packed her hull with massive steam turbines, putting out over 200,000 shaft horsepower.

SPEAKER_1 (2:29)

And that leads to the central engineering paradox of her design. She was heavily armored. I mean, she carried up to 19.5 inches of specialized steel armor on the faces of her gun turrets.

SPEAKER_2 (2:41)

That is a staggering amount of steel.

SPEAKER_1 (2:43)

It is. But despite carrying thousands of tons of steel plating, she was designed to hit a top speed of 32.5 knots, which translates to about 37 miles per hour on the open ocean.

SPEAKER_2 (2:54)

And hitting that speed with that much weight required just brilliant engineering. The designers essentially gave her a massive power plant, but restricted her width.

SPEAKER_1 (3:04)

To fit through the Panama Canal, right?

SPEAKER_2 (3:06)

Yes. They made her long and narrow, specifically so she could just barely squeeze through those canal locks.

That narrow beam inadvertently gave her a highly hydrodynamic shape, allowing her to slice through the water and then plow through it.

SPEAKER_1 (3:20)

So she has the armor of a rolling bunker, but the hydrodynamic profile to keep up with aircraft carriers. Her silhouette was totally defined by her main armament. Nine massive 16-inch guns capable of hurling 2,000-pound shells.

SPEAKER_2 (3:35)

A literal ton of explosives.

SPEAKER_1 (3:37)

Right.

But this brings up a massive strategic flaw, at least on paper. If aircraft carriers, ships that can launch planes from miles away, were already proving to be the undisputed future of naval warfare by 1944, wasn't the Missouri essentially a dinosaur the very day she hit the water?

SPEAKER_2 (3:54)

That was the prevailing fear. Absolutely. And it highlights a fundamental shift in naval strategy.

Prior to this, navies operated in what's known as the Dreadnought era.

SPEAKER_1 (4:03)

The big floating fortresses?

SPEAKER_2 (4:05)

Right. These slow, lumbering ships would literally line up parallel to an enemy's fleet and trade massive broadsides until one side sank.

By World War II, that style of fighting was effectively dead.

SPEAKER_1 (4:17)

Because airplanes could just sink a battleship before it ever saw the enemy ships.

SPEAKER_2 (4:21)

Exactly.

But the Navy didn't scrap the battleship. They adapted its role. The Iowa class ships transitioned into two new vital functions.