 Throughout the latter half of the 1940s, the various service branches of the United States had been reducing their inventories from their World War II levels.For the Navy, this resulted in several vessels of various types being decommissioned and either sold for scrap or placed in one of the various United States Navy reserve fleets scattered along the East and West Coast of the United States.As part of this contraction, three of the "Iowa"-class battleships had been de-activated and decommissioned; however, President Truman refused to allow "Missouri" to be decommissioned.