‘Mighty Mo’ Open To The Public Again Twice-Commissioned Battleship Welcomes Visitors To Bremerton

Some came to revisit their past, others to stand where history was made. John R. Scott did both Saturday at the reopening of the USS Missouri to the public.

Scott, 71, of Anchorage, Alaska, boarded the battleship for the first time since he was a communications orderly for Adm. William F. “Bull” Halsey, commander of the 3rd Fleet at the end of World War II.

The former Marine Corps stood ramrodstraight, facing six 16-inch guns on the forecastle as a Navy band played the national anthem at the opening of the ribbon-cutting ceremony at the Puget Sound Naval Shipyard.

A native of Sweet Springs, Mo., Scott said in an interview his most memorable day was bringing Halsey the radio message that Japan had capitulated.

“He was sitting right there in the swivel chair,” Scott said, pointing to the admiral’s bridge. “He dropped his cigarette. I picked it up for him.

“He said, ‘I’m just as flighty as a schoolgirl.”’

Moments later, eight Japanese warplanes were spotted and Halsey was asked what to do.

“He said, ‘Shoot them down in a friendly manner.’ We did. We took care of them,” Scott said.

The Armed Forces Day opening marked what may be only a brief return of what was once this Navy town’s main tourist attraction.

Long known as the “Mighty Mo” and billed by the Navy as “the world’s most historic battleship,” the 887-foot dreadnought was built at the New York Naval Shipyard in Brooklyn and commissioned on Dec. 14, 1944 - the last battleship built in the United States.

The ship was used in the battles of Iwo Jima and Okinawa. A plaque marks the place where the articles of the Japanese surrender ending World War II were signed as the Missouri lay at anchor in Tokyo Bay on Sept. 2, 1945.

After seeing action in the Korean War, the Missouri was decommissioned in 1955 and placed on display at the shipyard, drawing an estimated 180,000 visitors a year.

Dale Leighton, 43, of Port Orchard, visiting the ship with his son, Mark, 19, said he had been aboard at least 20 times while growing up in Bremerton and working at the shipyard.

He recalled diving with friends from the bow anchor holes into the water.

Overhauled and recommissioned in 1986 at a cost of $475 million, the ship was deployed to fire shells as heavy as Volkswagen Beetles at Iraqi coastal fortifications during Operation Desert Storm in 1991.

The next spring, however, the ship was decommissioned once again to save operating costs of $24 million a year.

Only a small part of the ship, including the surrender deck, is open to the public through the summer.

Resting beside the Missouri but closed to the public is the nearly identical USS New Jersey. The other battleships in the same class, the USS Iowa and USS Wisconsin are on the East Coast.