#4: USS Missouri: The Battleship Where World War II Ended
On September 2, 1945, the Japanese Instrument of Surrender was signed on the deck of USS Missouri in Tokyo Bay, officially ending the most devastating conflict in human history. General Douglas MacArthur, Fleet Admiral Chester Nimitz, and representatives of nine Allied nations stood on her teak deck as Japanese Foreign Minister Mamoru Shigemitsu and General Yoshijiro Umezu signed away an empire. That moment made Missouri the most historically significant warship of the 20th century.
Missouri served in three wars: World War II, Korea, and the Gulf War. During the 1991 Gulf War, at nearly 50 years old, she launched Tomahawk cruise missiles at Iraqi targets and shelled the Kuwaiti coast with her 16-inch guns, the last time a battleship fired its main battery in anger. An Iowa-class battleship displacing 57,540 tons, she could make 33 knots and hurl nine 2,700-pound shells simultaneously at targets 24 miles away. Today, Missouri is preserved as a museum ship at Pearl Harbor, permanently moored near the wreck of USS Arizona, bookending America's Pacific War from first attack to final victory.
