Fantail of USS Missouri, probably during the Korean War. The immediate years following WWII were not kind to the battleship, or the helicopter for that matter. When the Korean War began, Big Mo was the only active battleship and that was only due to the political will of Harry Truman whose daughter christened the ship. During fleet maneuvers in 1947, Missouri’s gun turrets proved more than adequate as a temporary helipad to support helicopter logistics missions and even provided a life saving transport of their senior surgeon; doing in minutes what used to take hours. Scout planes were immediatley obsolete. Helicopters became operational in 1948 when VX-3 split into HU-1 and 2. By 1949, Missouri had both her seaplane catapults removed to make room for the helicopter. Helicopters such as this HO3S-1 from HU-2 out of NAS Lakehurst supplemented the already awesome lethality of the Iowa-class battleships during the Korean War by providing logistics, mine spotting, naval surface gunfire support (spotting) and SAR/MEDEVAC. These capabilities proved vital during the Korean War and Missouri was huge part in proving their concept before the conflict.
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