In the 1991 Gulf War, two old American battleships hammered Saddam Hussein’s army, fooled it about where the attack would come from and even took a surrender from a drone.
Story Highlights
- At about 1:30 a.m. on Thursday, Jan. 17, 1991, USS Missouri fired the first battleship Tomahawk cruise missile ever launched in a war.
- Missouri and USS Wisconsin fired 52 Tomahawks and 1,083 16-inch shells during Desert Storm.
- Their shelling helped keep an estimated six to ten Iraqi divisions facing the sea while the real attack came from the west.
- At the end of the war, Iraqi troops on Faylaka Island waved white flags at Wisconsin’s spotter drone.
Iraq had invaded Kuwait in August 1990, and Desert Storm was the U.S.-led campaign to drive Iraqi forces out. The battleships’ job was to hit Iraqi positions along the Kuwaiti coast and keep Saddam’s commanders watching the sea while the main ground attack swept in across the desert.
World War II Ships With Modern Missiles
Both ships were Iowa-class battleships from the World War II era. Missouri was laid down in 1941. By 1991 they also carried Tomahawks, long-range guided missiles that can be launched from ships at targets far inland.
Missouri fired 28 Tomahawks and Wisconsin fired 24. Wisconsin also served as the Tomahawk strike commander for the whole theater, coordinating 213 launches from ships and submarines.
Sixteen-Inch Guns Go to Work
On Feb. 3, 1991, Missouri opened up with her 16-inch guns on Iraqi command bunkers along the Kuwaiti coast. Each shell weighed 2,700 pounds, about as much as a small car. Over the campaign, Missouri fired 759 of them and Wisconsin fired 324.
The Feint That Pinned Down Iraq’s Army
Offshore sat roughly 17,000 Marines from the 4th and 5th Marine Expeditionary Brigades. On Feb. 25, 1991, they staged a feint, a fake move that looked like the start of a beach landing on the Kuwaiti coast. With the battleships pounding the shore, Iraq kept an estimated six to ten divisions dug in and facing the sea. The real attack came from the west.
Surrender to a Drone
Missouri began shelling Faylaka Island, off the coast near Kuwait City, on Feb. 24, 1991, firing 133 rounds, and Wisconsin’s guns worked the island over for days. In the last days of February, Wisconsin’s Pioneer drone, a small pilotless plane used to spot targets for the guns, flew low over the island. Iraqi troops waved handkerchiefs, shirts and bedsheets to show they were giving up. It is remembered as the first surrender of soldiers to an unmanned aircraft.
From Warships to Museums
Wisconsin was decommissioned on Sept. 30, 1991, seven months after her last salvo. Missouri followed on March 31, 1992. Missouri has been moored at Pearl Harbor since 1998 and opened as a museum in January 1999, within sight of the USS Arizona Memorial. Wisconsin arrived at the Nauticus maritime center in Norfolk, Virginia, on Dec. 7, 2000.
Their last war showed what heavy guns from the sea could still do: hit hard, pin down an army and keep the enemy guessing until it was too late.
Sources:
19fortyfive.com, navysite.de, ussmissouri.org, ussmissouriassociation.com, history.navy.mil
