-
Overview
The USS Biloxi: A distinguished record of service.
The USS Biloxi was a light cruiser that distinguished itself in World War II. The 608-foot, 10,000-ton vessel, known by her 1,200 officers and crew as “The Busy Bee,” earned nine battle stars during her service from January 1944 to May 1945. It was during that period that the Biloxi completed one of the longest continuous tours of combat duty by any U.S. warship, never missing a major operation in the Pacific.
Operating in support of carriers making air strikes against the very heart of the enemy homeland, Tokyo itself, the Biloxi saw action in battles at Okinawa, Iwo Jima, Formosa, Leyte Gulf, Saipan, the Philippines, and was one of the first ships to evacuate allied prisoners of war from Nagasaki, Japan shortly after the atomic bomb was dropped.
On March 27, 1945, during the assault on Okinawa, the Biloxi was attacked by four Japanese kamikaze planes. Three were shot down, but a fourth, riddled with bullets, crashed into the Biloxi, and a 1,100-pound bomb was later found unexploded below the ship’s hangar deck.
The ship was decommissioned on Oct. 29, 1946, and broken up for scrap. The ship’s superstructure, the Purple Heart display and garden, and other war-related markers sit proudly in the Biloxi Small Craft Harbor.