 Missouri was one of the Iowa-class "fast battleship" designs planned in 1938 by the Preliminary Design Branch at the Bureau of Construction and Repair. She was laid down at the Brooklyn Navy Yard on 6 January 1941, launched on 29 January 1944 and commissioned on 11 June. The ship was the third of the Iowa class, but the fourth and final Iowa-class ship commissioned by the United States Navy. The ship was christened at her launching by Mary Margaret Truman, daughter of Harry S. Truman, then a United States senator from Missouri.
