They sported a main battery of nine 16-inch guns that could fi re either explosive or armor-piercing ordnance and had a remarkable range of some 20 miles. They were designed to travel fast-over 30 knots-and to deliver a payload unequaled by anything afloat. The third US Navy ship to be named after the state, USS Missouri, known colloquially as Mighty Mo, was indeed a powerful vessel, one of four Iowa-class battleships ordered in 1939–40 at a cost of $100 million each.
Halsey, and Rear Admiral Forrest Sherman. Standing directly behind him were (left-to-right): General of the Army Douglas MacArthur, Admiral William F. Nimitz signed the Instrument of Surrender as United States Representative, on board USS Missouri, September 2, 1945. The eventual selection of USS Missouri as the host vessel for the signing aroused considerable controversy at the time, and continues to confound both naval veterans and historians to this day. All that remained was the formal surrender, and the choice of venue. In his radio announcement of August 15 (August 14 in America), he cited the devastation rained by “a new and most cruel bomb.” At long last, the Second World War would finally end. Six days later, a shaken Emperor Hirohito finally declared the surrender of Imperial Japan. As everyone knows, Truman opted for the latter choice, detonating nuclear weapons on the cities of Hiroshima and Nagasaki on August 6 and 9, 1945, killing at least 100,000 Japanese people in the initial bombings. Truman from Missouri was faced with two possible and equally drastic measures: the amphibious invasion of Japan labeled Operation Downfall, which was predicted to cost millions of lives on both sides, or the delivery of the newly developed atomic bomb. With defeat all but inevitable, Imperial Japan still refused to capitulate. Even after the firebombing of 68 cities, including Tokyo, the stunning defeats at Iwo Jima and Okinawa, and the earlier neutralization of their allies, they fought on. For nearly four years, the Japanese had been a determined and relentless foe.
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