Thursday, January 31, 2019

29 January

1944.

75 years ago last Tuesday.

The USS Missouri was launched.



About 18 months later the war ended on her decks.  Seeing plenty of action in the meantime, starting a little over a year after the launch.

A machine that complicated I am sure they were STILL finding things that shoulda been fixed before it left the yard.  It was only 18 months.  It takes longer to fix an elevator on a new Aircraft Carrier, these days

2 comments:

Sigman said...

My Dad was on Mo’s sister the Wisconsin during Korea. He told me that during WW2 the Iowa’s sailed with 10,500 Officers and Enlisted and everyone but the Captain and XO (he thought) hot bunked (3 guys to every berth). During Korea it was 3500 or so and everyone had their own rack.

LCB said...

Sigman, that was because of the anti-aircraft platform the Iowa class became to protect the fast carriers. I wonder how much weight 15 minutes of firing all those guns was just "gone", especially if they broomed the brass over the side.

I wish they'd put one of the Iowa class back to WW2 configuration for historical purposes. My vote would be the Might Mo...put her back to the way she was when the surrender was signed.