Jonathan Douglas

Review of Battleship Missouri Memorial

A rare opportunity to glimpse a key piece of naval...

A rare opportunity to glimpse a key piece of naval hardware that played an integral role throughout multiple key points during the 20th Century. The basic tour only covered a limited space on the ship, which at first, I couldn't understand given the sheer size of the vessel. Essentially you tour the bow and starboard sides, a bit of the tower, then are left on your own to explore the rest. Once we started below deck, we understood why - the fact that the ship was retrofitted in the 80's means that you get all of its glory (or lack thereof), which means "old" but not in an interesting historical way. So many of the passageways were deserted and sparsely documented, it just felt a bit creepy being so alone in such a large space. I hope in the future more will be done to restore the interior, so my advice would be to skip below the deck (or just do a brief tour), and move onto other sites in the Monument.