USS Chicago (CA-136)
_underway_in_the_Coral_Sea,_in_October_1979.jpg) The Chicago as a guided missile cruiser in October 1979 |
|
| Overview | |
|---|---|
| Keel laying | July 28, 1943 |
| Launch | August 20, 1944 |
| 1. Period of service |
|
| Commissioning | January 10, 1945 |
| Decommissioning | March 1, 1980 |
| Whereabouts | Wrecked in 1991 |
| Technical specifications | |
| displacement |
13,600 tons |
| length |
205.71 meters |
| width |
21.59 meters |
| Draft |
6.25 meters |
| crew |
1,142 |
| drive |
4 propellers, driven by 4 steam turbines; 89,000 kW |
| speed |
33 knots |
| Armament |
1943 : 9 × 8 "/ 55 guns (3 × 3), 12 × 5" / 38 guns (6 × 2), 48 × 40 mm (12 × 4), 22 × 20 mm (24 × 1) |
The USS Chicago (CA-136 / CG-11) was asked in January 1945 into service heavy cruiser of the Baltimore class . The ship served in the United States Pacific Fleet during the Pacific War . Between June 1947 and November 1958, was Chicago for over a decade in the reserve fleet before it reactivated a guided missile cruiser of the Albany-Class was rebuilt. After more than five years, the ship was put into service in May 1964 and then took part in five missions during the Vietnam War. In March 1980, Chicago, now 35 years old, was decommissioned as unfit for duty and transferred to the reserve fleet, where it lay until it was scrapped in December 1991.
history
Second World War
_off_the_Philadelphia_Naval_Shipyard_on_7_May_1945_(19-N-84410).jpg)
The Chicago was laid down on July 28, 1943 as the fourteenth and final Baltimore-class unit in the Philadelphia Naval Shipyard and was launched on August 20, 1944. The commissioning took place on January 10, 1945 under the command of Captain Richard R. Hartung.
After six weeks of preparation for the sea mission, the Chicago began its first training mission on February 26, 1945. This ended on April 11th. The ship then returned to the shipyard on April 16 for improvements. On May 7th, the Chicago finally left for her first active mission in the Pacific Ocean. On the way there, the ship made stops in San Juan and Colón and completed target practice. On May 31, 1945, reached Chicago the port of Pearl Harbor .
After further fire exercises, the heavy cruiser ran into the atoll of Eniwetok on July 5 and met the battleship USS North Carolina (BB-55) there . Three days later, both ships arrived off the Mariana Islands and joined Task Group 38.4 North . The task of the Chicago was to secure the aircraft carriers available in the task group during air raids on Honshū on July 10, 1945 and on the tracks at Honshū and Hokkaidō the following day.
On July 14th, the cruiser gathered together with the battleships USS South Dakota (BB-57) , USS Indiana (BB-58) , USS Massachusetts (BB-59) , cruiser USS Quincy (CA-71) and nine destroyers, to attack targets in the Kamaishi industrial area north of Honshu. The Chicago attacked an unidentified Japanese escort destroyer who was hit and then had to return to port damaged. The attack on the industrial area, in which, among other things, a steel mill was destroyed, became the last firefight with the participation of US battleships in World War II.
In the following two weeks, the ship took part in further attacks on Honshū and Hokkaidō, Tokyo Prefecture and Kure and Kobe . On July 29, took Chicago together with the HMS King George V in a night attack on the port of Hamamatsu part.
The ship spent the rest of the war securing aircraft carriers. After Japan surrendered in September 1945, it supplied the occupation forces in Tokyo.
Post-war period and reserve fleet
After the Chicago to October 23, 1945 in Yokosuka , they participated in the demilitarization of the Izu Islands . On November 7, the ship ended its mission and called at San Pedro , California , where it arrived 20 days later. After a stay in the Long Beach Naval Shipyard , the Chicago set out for the Far East again on January 24, 1946, where she became part of the occupying forces in Shanghai in February and then in Sasebo from March . The ship stayed there until January 14, 1947. Then the Chicago ran to the Puget Sound Naval Shipyard and was transferred to the reserve fleet there.
Service as a guided missile cruiser
After more than 11 years of berth, the Chicago was reclassified as CG-11 and transferred to the Hunters Point Naval Shipyard near San Francisco for conversion to a guided missile cruiser . The renovation began on July 1, 1959 and lasted about five years. On May 2, 1964, the ship was put back into service and was henceforth part of the Albany class, which consisted of three units.
After commissioning, the Chicago completed several training missions before setting off on May 12, 1966 for her first of a total of five Vietnam missions. During these missions, the ship was more passively involved. So it completed further exercises, took over the radar monitoring and patrolled off the coast. An exception was made on May 9, 1972, when the Chicago was attacked by North Vietnamese coastal guns while on patrol in front of Hải Phong . The ship remained undamaged.
On May 8, 1972, the Chicago got into another firefight as part of Operation Pocket Money . Together with the aircraft carrier USS Coral Sea (CV-43) and the guided missile cruiser USS Long Beach (CGN-9) , the ship was supposed to mine the port of Hoi Phong. The association was attacked by several Mikoyan Gurevichs . The Chicago managed to shoot down a machine.
On June 21, 1972, the war effort of the ship in Vietnam ended with the return to San Diego. In the same year the Chicago received a Navy Unit Commendation for its services .
Between the Vietnam missions, the ship also took part in other, shorter missions. During her third voyage to Vietnam, she was temporarily relocated off the coast of Korea from April 17 to 27 , after a Lockheed EC-121 Warning Star with 30 people on board was shot down there.
After the Vietnam War, the Chicago participated in United States Navy exercises worldwide, the last of which ended on December 17, 1979. A modernization of the aging ship was under discussion for 1980. After an inspection, however , the Chicago was deemed unsuitable for further economic service and therefore retired on March 1, 1980. Until February 8, 1989, the ship was part of the reserve fleet in Bremerton . Recyclable equipment and memorabilia were then taken off board the Chicago and the cruiser itself was sold to Southwest Recycling in California on December 9, 1991 for demolition.
An anchor of the Chicago has been exhibited as a memorial at Navy Pier in the eponymous city since November 11, 1995 .
Web links
- Entry about the ship on navsource.org (English)
- Entry about the ship on navysite.de (English)
- Entry about the ship on historyofwar.org (English)
Individual evidence
- ↑ Jason McDonald: USS Indiana (BB-58) Shells Japan. In: The World War II Multimedia Database. 2007, accessed May 24, 2019 .
- ^ Van Nguyen Duong: The Tragedy of the Vietnam War: A South Vietnamese Officer's Analysis McFarland, Jefferson 2014, ISBN 978-0-7864-8338-9 , page 165.