In 1984, she was modernized to carrier Tomahawk cruise missiles along with up-dated air defense systems.
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Forty-seven years after her commissioning, in 1991 the USS Missouri was modernized and sent to battle Iraq in “Operation Desert Storm”.
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The ol’ beast fired multiple Tomahawk cruise missiles at Iraqi targets.
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Her final resting place came in 1998, where the Missouri has been honored as a museum ship at Foxtrot 5 Pier on Ford Island in Pearl Harbor.
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These achievements over such a long period of time are amazing but it is one other event in which history will forever remember this ship.
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On this ship the Empire of Japan officially surrendered, bringing a final closure to World War 2.
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However the real story involves none of these achievements. In fact, this is not a story about a weapon. This is an inspirational story about the human side of War.
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One of the scariest tactics of WW2 came from the Kamikaze.
Takijiro Onishi was an admiral in the Imperial Japanese Navy during World War 2.
He set up the first Special Attack Unit, Kamikaze unit, near Manila (the capital city of the Philippine Islands) as the certainty of a U.S. invasion became unavoidable.
In his own words, “I don’t think there would be any other certain way to carry out the operation (to hold the Philippines), than to put a 250 kg bomb on a Zero and let it crash into a U.S. carrier, in order to disable her for a week.”