The Missouri in 1953

gouache, 11 1/4" x 19"

$5,500

The painting depicts the Iowa-class battleship USS Missouri (B8-63) in the Atlantic in late April, 1953, as she heads for Norfolk Navy Base, Virginia, in the company of a Gearing-class destroyer. At this point in her career her secondary armament of 20 mm guns had long been removed, though almost all her quad 40mm mounts were still place. She had departed Yokosuko, Japan, a month earlier after her last combat tour in Korea (March, 1953). When she docks in Norfolk she will prepare for a midshipman cruise in June, 1953.

 The Missouri (also known as "Mighty Mo” and "Big Mo”) is a US Navy Iowa-class battleship and was the third USN ship to bear that state’s name. She was also the last battleship built by the United States and was the site of the Japanese Empire’s surrender to end WWII.

 Missouri was ordered in 1940 and was commissioned in 1944. In the Pacific theater of operations in WWII she fought in the battles of Iwo Jima and Okinawa, where she was struck by a Japanese kamikaze but suffered only superficial damage, she also shelled the Japanese home islands.

 She fought in the Korean War from 1950 to 1953 making three separate tours. She was decommissioned in 1955 and sent to the reserve where she and her three sister ships were “mothballed” for future service. She was reactivated in 1984 as part of the US Navy's 600-Ship Plan and she fought in the 1991 Gulf War.

Missouri received a total of 11 Battle Stars for service in WW II, Korea, and the Persian Gulf.  She was finally decommissioned on March 31, 1992 but remained on the Ships' Registry until 1995. In 1996 she was donated to the USS Missouri Memorial Association and became a museum ship at Pearl Harbor, Hawaii.