What is the only US state not to have a battleship named after it?

My guess is that it is Alaska. According to this encyclopedia entry, none of the four ships to be called USS Alaska has been a battleship.

http://encyclopedia.thefreedictionary.com/USS%20Alaska

The fact is that neither of the two more recent entrants to the US state list, namely Alaska and Hawaii, have had battleships named after them.

There are no battleships in service in the US Navy and not all the State battleships were completed. Here they all are:

It doesn't explain why only one wasn't named after a state or why it was called Kearsarge.

Ah, I made a classic mistake, gmack, in assuming the question was right to assert there is only one state that hasn't been so honoured. Once I found a state with no battleship I stopped looking!

The battleship USS Kearsarge was named in honour of the Civil War ship of the same name, which fought one of the most famous naval encounters of the war against the Confederate warship Alabama.

USS Missouri was the last of these massive ships to be decommissioned, in 1992, though she had spent the period from 1955 to 1986 in the reserve fleet. Having started her career at Iwo Jima, she last saw action (in the company of USS Wisconsin) in the first Gulf War as a platform for Tomahawk missiles fired in support of the relief of Kuwait.

[Aug 05 04 2:48 AM] Stew54 writes:

I forgot to add, of course, that debate still rages amongst naval historians as to whether, at the end of that long and distinguished lifetime of gallant service, USS Missouri's proudest moment came as the backdrop to Cher's most memorable video, or to Steven Seagal's finest movie...

The technical answer is: all of them have had battleships named after them. The battleship building era ended (for the US) in 1944 when USS Missouri was commissioned. At that time Alaska and Hawaii were territories and those names went to large cruisers (CB).