missile attack on battleship USS Missouri

The fact that Iraq fired an anti-ship missile at the WWII battleship USS Missouri in 1991 is not secret, but is still relatively not known in the general public. Even inside the defense community, the event is often poorly understood, or full of errors and bad timelines.

What makes this so curious is that more than any war before or since, operation “Desert Storm” was saturated with media coverage, and the two battleships in particular were among the most interesting pieces of hardware. Furthermore this event was the first time in history that a warship shot down a missile with a missile, and the last time that a battleship was attacked by any method.

(WWII ends aboard USS Missouri on 2 September 1945.)

(Iraqi “Seersucker” missiles captured during operation “Desert Storm”.)

(USS Missouri firing in the Persian Gulf in 1991. A departing 16″ shell is visible.)