USS Mississippi (BB-41) fought throughout the Pacific for 4 years. She earned eight battle stars, took two kamikaze hits and saved firing at enemy positions. She survived two catastrophic turret explosions and watched Japan give up from Tokyo Bay. After the struggle, she fired the primary guided missiles ever launched from an American floor warship.
However it’s her function on the Battle of Surigao Strait in October 1944 that cemented her place in naval historical past, the place she fired the final shot any battleship ever fired at one other.
A Ship Constructed For WWI
Newport News Shipbuilding laid down Mississippi’s keel on April 5, 1915. She slid down the methods and was launched on Jan. 25, 1917, sponsored by Miss Camelle McBeath, daughter of the chairman of the Mississippi State Freeway Fee. The Navy commissioned her as BB-41 on Dec. 18, 1917, with Capt. Joseph Lee Jayne in command.
She was the third U.S. Navy ship to hold the state’s identify and the second of three New Mexico-class battleships. She was 624 ft lengthy, 32,000 tons at full load and carried twelve 14-inch weapons in 4 triple turrets.
The Navy despatched her to the Atlantic Fleet for the rest of American involvement in World Battle I. She ran coaching workout routines alongside the East Coast, although she by no means fired at an enemy in the course of the struggle.
By July 1919, she had sailed by the Panama Canal and settled into Pacific Fleet operations at San Pedro, California. She spent the subsequent 12 years on workout routines and Caribbean winter cruises beneath a succession of commanding officers.
Amongst them was Capt. William A. Moffett, who led the ship from 1919 to 1921 and later grew to become the Navy’s first chief of the Bureau of Aeronautics, the daddy of American naval aviation.
The No. 2 Turret Accident
On June 12, 1924, throughout routine gunnery observe off San Pedro, the heart gun of No. 2 turret exploded on a reload. A burning ember left within the barrel from the earlier shot ignited 470 kilos of propellant because the crew loaded for the subsequent spherical.
The blast warped the metal passageways shut, sealing the gun crew inside.
Forty-four males asphyxiated earlier than rescue groups may minimize by the sealed steel with acetylene torches. When the ship reached port, residual powder detonated inside the identical turret and killed 4 males from the rescue celebration.
Forty-eight males had been killed, three of them had been officers and 45 had been enlisted. It was the deadliest peacetime catastrophe in Navy historical past to that time.
The Bureau of Ordnance concluded that the middle barrel acquired weaker air purging than the outer barrels, permitting burning particles to stay within the breech. Reload procedures had been up to date and the ship acquired in depth refitting over the subsequent decade. Nonetheless, the issue, as would grow to be clear later, was not fastened.
Mississippi entered Norfolk Navy Yard in March 1931 for a two-year overhaul that remodeled her silhouette fully. Her outdated cage masts got here down, a brand new superstructure went up and torpedo safety was added alongside the hull. She returned to the Pacific in late 1934 on a visually totally different ship.
The USS Mississippi Goes to Battle
In Might 1941, with U-boats ravaging Allied transport within the North Atlantic, the Navy transferred Mississippi and her sister ships to the Atlantic Fleet. The battleships spent months escorting convoys to Iceland, beneath the fixed risk of an unprovoked submarine assault.
When Japan struck Pearl Harbor on Dec. 7, she was at Reykjavik, one of many few American battleships absolutely operational in these first 48 hours. With Germany’s floor fleet and the Italian fleet within the Mediterranean held up by the Royal Navy, American battleships had been nearly completely despatched to the Pacific.
She turned west and reached San Francisco on Jan. 22, 1942. Whereas the battleships that survived Pearl Harbor spent years in salvage and reconstruction, Mississippi educated and ran escort obligation alongside the West Coast.
In Might 1943, she sailed for the Aleutians, the place Japan had occupied American soil since June 1942. She joined a bombardment power on July 22 and spent hours shelling Kiska, hitting Japanese positions throughout the island in preparation for the American landings.
Six days later, on the night time of July 28-29, Japanese Rear Adm. Masatomi Kimura slipped two cruisers and ten destroyers by the American blockade beneath dense fog and evacuated over 5,000 troops in beneath an hour. When Allied forces landed on Aug. 15, they discovered the island was empty.
Bombarding the Enemy
On Nov. 20, 1943, Mississippi was offering naval gunfire help off Makin Island within the Gilbert Islands when smoke emerged from the rangefinder ports of the No. 2 turret. A sudden explosion then erupted, inflicting in depth injury to the Mississippi.
The explosion had come from the middle barrel, the identical gun accountable for the 1924 catastrophe. Burning particles from the earlier spherical had ignited the propellant cost throughout loading, the precise mechanism the Bureau of Ordnance had recognized practically 20 years earlier and declared corrected.
Forty-three males died. No. 2 turret was knocked out for the rest of the operation.
Mississippi’s three remaining turrets saved firing till the shore bombardment mission was full. The Bureau of Ordnance investigated and reached the identical conclusion it had reached in 1924.
After repairs, she went straight again to work. She hit Kwajalein on Jan. 31, 1944, bombarded Taroa and Wotje in February, then shelled Kavieng on New Eire in March.
Following a summer time refit at Puget Sound, she arrived off Peleliu on Sept. 12, 1944, to help the Marine and Army assault on the Palau Islands, spending every week in steady shore bombardment earlier than shifting on to Leyte, Philippines, arriving Oct. 19.
5 days later, the Japanese fleet made its transfer to intercept the American landings. The Mississippi would discover itself within the midst of the biggest naval battle in historical past.
Surigao Strait: The Final Battleship Engagement
Vice Adm. Shoji Nishimura commanded the Japanese Southern Drive shifting north by Surigao Strait on the night time of Oct. 24-25, 1944. His power was constructed round battleships Yamashiro and Fuso, sister ships of the identical class, together with a heavy cruiser and 4 destroyers.
His orders had been to interrupt by to the Leyte Gulf touchdown seashores and add his firepower to the bigger Japanese power coming from the north. The intelligence supplied to him made it clear the mission had nearly no likelihood of success. He pressed on anyway.
American PT boats and destroyers hit his column repeatedly as he drove north. Fuso took quite a few torpedo hits and sank earlier than reaching the battleship line, taking most of her 1,630-man crew together with her. Two destroyers sank as nicely. Nishimura pressed on with what remained, a burning, battered column that had misplaced half its ships earlier than any American battleship fired a spherical.
Rear Adm. Jesse Oldendorf’s six battleships had been arrayed throughout the strait’s exit with cruisers on each flanks. In nearly textbook trend, the U.S. power had crossed the T and intercepted a Japanese fleet heading straight for them.
Three of the battleships, West Virginia, California and Tennessee, had been refitted after Pearl Harbor with the Navy’s superior Mark 8 fireplace management radar, which may observe a goal at lengthy vary even in full darkness. West Virginia opened fireplace first and put 93 rounds into the Yamashiro.
California and Tennessee added 63 and 69 rounds, respectively. American destroyers on each flanks continued urgent torpedo assaults all through the engagement.
Maryland, outfitted with the older Mark 3 radar, tracked the enemy vessels by watching West Virginia’s shell splashes and managed six salvos and 48 rounds in opposition to them. Pennsylvania, additionally with the Mark 3, failed to accumulate any targets in any respect and by no means fired a single shot in the course of the engagement.
Mississippi Ends the Age of Battleships
Mississippi additionally carried a Mark 3. Her gunnery staff labored to accumulate the Yamashiro whereas the remainder of the battleline was already tearing the Japanese ship aside. By the point she locked on, Yamashiro had been beneath sustained fireplace for greater than quarter-hour and had been struck by a number of torpedoes.
At 4:08 a.m., she fired a single 12-gun salvo at a spread of 19,790 yards. Oldendorf had issued the cease-fire order solely moments earlier, although the Mississippi had not but acquired it. Nonetheless, the rounds had come too late because the Japanese ship was already ablaze and sinking.
Whilst she started slipping beneath, the Yamashiro struck again. The Japanese battleship’s secondary battery discovered the American destroyer Albert W. Grant and badly broken her earlier than the tip.
At 4:09 a.m., along with his ship ablaze and itemizing onerous, Nishimura transmitted his ultimate message to the fleet, “We proceed until completely annihilated. I’ve positively achieved my mission.”
Yamashiro lastly capsized at 4:19 a.m. Vice Adm. Nishimura and practically all of her 1,636 officers and males went down together with her. Solely 10 survived.
The Mississippi had contributed to the destruction and sinking of the Yamashiro. Whereas the opposite ships scored direct hits, Mississippi’s fast salvo grew to become the ultimate time in historical past {that a} battleship fired photographs in anger at one other.
Kamikazes and Okinawa
Mississippi continued shore bombardment help at Leyte till Nov. 16, then staged from the Admiralty Islands earlier than returning to San Pedro Bay on Dec. 28 to arrange for the subsequent operation.
On Jan. 6, 1945, she opened fireplace in Lingayen Gulf because the invasion power approached Luzon. Three days later, a Japanese kamikaze struck her port facet whereas she was standing by for fireplace help close to the touchdown seashores.
The affect killed 26 sailors and wounded 70 others. She stayed on station and saved firing for 32 extra days earlier than withdrawing to Pearl Harbor for repairs.
She returned to fight in time to affix the Okinawa invasion fleet, arriving off Nakagusuku Wan on Might 6, 1945. The land battle had stalled in opposition to the Shuri Line, a fortified community of ridges, tunnels and caves anchored by Shuri Fort, the traditional seat of the Ryukyu Kingdom.
Mississippi fired 1,300 14-inch shells on the citadel and its surrounding defensive community over the course of three days. The concentrated naval bombardment, mixed with sustained Army and Marine assaults, broke the Japanese maintain on the Shuri Line. The citadel fell on Might 29, 1945.
On June 5, a second kamikaze approached the Mississippi. The boys mistook the aircraft for a pleasant one earlier than it struck her starboard facet, killing one sailor. She saved firing at enemy positions till June 16.
Following the tip of hostilities, she anchored in Tokyo Bay on Sept. 2 as Japanese officers signed give up paperwork aboard the USS Missouri. She then briefly participated within the Occupation of Japan.
Mississippi’s Later Years
Following the struggle, Mississippi transited the Panama Canal and entered the Mississippi River. On Oct. 16, 1945, she steamed by to New Orleans for Navy Day celebrations.
The Navy ultimately stripped three of her 4 predominant battery turrets in 1946, redesignated her AG-128 and assigned her to the Operational Improvement Drive within the Atlantic as a take a look at platform. For a decade, she carried prototype radar techniques, experimental weapons and new fireplace management tools.
On Jan. 28-29, 1953, off Cape Cod, the brand new take a look at platform launched the RIM-2 Terrier, a brand new surface-to-air weapon that grew to become the inspiration of American ship-based air protection by the Chilly Battle.
The ship that fired the final battleship salvo in opposition to an enemy battleship in historical past additionally fired the primary guided missile launched from a floor warship in Navy historical past. She had closed one period of naval warfare and opened one other.
The Navy decommissioned the Mississippi on Sept. 17, 1956, and bought her for scrapping two months later. She had earned eight battle stars for her WWII service.
Naval historian Rear Adm. Samuel Eliot Morison described what Mississippi had accomplished that October night time in his official historical past of U.S. Navy operations in World Battle II.
“When Mississippi discharged her twelve 14-inch weapons at Yamashiro at a spread of 19,790 yards, at 0408 October 25, 1944,” Morison wrote, “she was not solely giving that battleship the coup de grâce, however firing a funeral salute to a completed period of naval warfare.”
In her 39 years of service, she survived two catastrophic turret explosions, absorbed two kamikaze hits and fought throughout the complete Pacific from the Aleutians to Tokyo Bay. She participated within the largest naval battle in historical past, fired the ultimate battleship salvo in opposition to an enemy battleship and fired the primary guided-missile from a floor vessel in naval historical past. The USS Mississippi stays some of the storied and legendary ships to have ever served within the U.S. Navy.
Sources: Naval Historical past and Heritage Command, DANFS, USS Mississippi (BB-41); Naval Institute Proceedings, December 1958, “The Battle of Surigao Strait”; Naval Historical past Journal, October 2018, “Terror and Triumph at Lingayen Gulf” (James M. Scott, USNI); Battle of Okinawa, NHHC; NavSource, BB-41 Battle Diary; South Bay Historical past/Day by day Breeze, Oct. 19, 2011; Day by day Press (Newport News), Nov. 16, 1989; Morison, Samuel Eliot, Historical past of United States Naval Operations in World Battle II, Vol. 12, “Leyte, June 1944-January 1945.”
