USS MISSOURI: The "Mighty Mo" and the Men Who Sailed Her

On March 31, 1992, as Captain Albert Lee Kaiss stepped off the quarterdeck of the battleship USS Missouri (BB-63), turned to salute the ensign, then proceeded down the gangway, he was making naval history. He was the last man off the last battleship, making him in essence the last battleship sailor.

He was also the only Commanding Officer in the history of the US Navy to both put a Navy ship into commission, and take the same ship out of commission, having commanded her twice. Nor was she an ordinary warship. The USS Missouri was a legend.

One of only four Iowa-class battleships, she was born at the start of the Second World War, and although she would get into the fight late, she would still see action as part of the first naval air strike on the Japanese home islands, bombard the shores of Iwo Jima and Okinawa before anchoring in Tokyo Bay to receive the Japanese surrender.

Missouri would see her second war in Korea, fighting first North Koreans and later Chinese Communists off the shores of North Korea. Placed into the reserve fleet following the Korean War, she became a tourist attraction for the next 29 years before being called to serve in the Iraq War, her third conflict. After again being decommissioned, she sailed one last time to Pearl Harbor where she currently resides as a museum ship, within sight of the USS Arizona Memorial, in a sense the Alpha-Omega of America’s War against Japan.

In total, 20 men would command this legendary warship, and their stories are as diverse as the nation they served and stretch from Roosevelt's Great White Fleet to the shores of Iraq and Kuwait. Their story is the story of the USS Missouri. These men, Naval Academy graduates and not, aviators, sub and destroyer commanders and pioneers on the atomic frontier share the rare privilege of commanding America's premier warship, in war and peace. Their story is worth telling.