USS Tuscaloosa (CA-37)
_off_the_Philadelphia_Naval_Shipyard_on_10_November_1944_(NH_97939).jpg) |
||||||||||||||||||
|
||||||||||||||||||
|
||||||||||||||||||
|
||||||||||||||||||
|
||||||||||||||||||
.svg){kind=small}
The USS Tuscaloosa was a heavy cruiser of the United States Navy from the time of World War II . The ship belonged to the New Orleans class , which comprised a total of seven ship units. The official registration number was CA 37 , whereby the letters CA stands for heavy cruiser (English: Cruiser, Armored) and the number 37 is the serial number for all cruiser constructions.
history
Ordered in 1930, the cruiser was built from 1931 in New York by the New York Shipbuilding Co. in Camden (propulsion system: Westinghouse ), launched on November 15, 1933 and put into service on August 17, 1934.
In December 1939, the cruiser took on the crew of the German passenger ship Columbus after it had been sunk in a hopeless position.
In 1940 and 1941 the Tuscaloosa served the then US President Franklin D. Roosevelt several times as a cruise ship to various conferences. In May 1942 she served together with other US warships for the Northern Sea Convoy PQ 16 as remote security. Most recently, the ship accompanied the President, who was traveling on the USS Augusta , to a meeting with British Prime Minister Winston Churchill to negotiate the Atlantic Charter in August 1941 . In contrast to her sister ships, which were used during the Second World War with heavy losses in the Pacific War, the Tuscaloosa remained in the Atlantic and Europe until 1944. There she took part in various operations, but was never involved in serious conflicts with German or other enemy armed forces. The only relevant use of weapons were bombardments during the Allied landings in North Africa in November 1942. It was not until 1945 that the Tuscaloosa moved to the Pacific and still took part in the landing operations of the islands off Japan ( Iwo Jima in February 1945 and Okinawa in April 1945 ), but for the cruiser was unspectacular.
After the end of the war, the ship transported US troops back home and was finally decommissioned on February 13, 1946. On March 1, 1959, the Tuscaloosa was removed from the US Navy's list of uses. After the sale on June 25, 1959 to a company from Boston, the dismantling of the cruiser began in July 1959 in Baltimore.
technology
The technical data of the Tuscaloosa largely corresponded to the type ship New Orleans and the class of the same name. The armament of the ship consisted of three triple turrets with 20.3 cm (8 inch) caliber 55 Mk. 12 guns and eight single mounts with multi-purpose guns of 12.7 cm (5 inch) caliber 25 Mk. 19 During the war there were reinforced light guns for anti-aircraft defense and up to four float on-board aircraft (initially type Vought O3U Corsair , from 1936 type Curtiss SOC Seagull ), for which two catapults and a hangar were available. Like all heavy cruisers of the US Navy in World War II, it did not carry torpedo tubes. The Tuscaloosa belonged to the second assembly of the class (CA-37, 38), which had a lighter 20.3 cm gun with a smaller barbette (20 instead of 21 feet) and a slightly more compact turret. The resulting weight savings were used to reinforce the barbed armor (6.5 instead of 5 inches).
The Tuscaloosa was incidentally the first warship of the US Navy, which deployed in the Atlantic with a magnetic self-protection was provided (degaussing cable) (since June 1940).
The crew during the war was 128 officers and 1,054 men, altogether almost 300 men more than in peacetime. The Tuscaloosa propulsion system enabled a maximum speed of 107,000 wPS (eight Babcock & Wilcox boilers, 87,200 sqft heating surface, 320 psi pressure, 572 ° F temperature, four Westinghouse geared turbines) on four screws (12 feet diameter, four blades each) from 32.7 kn. The length of the hull was 578 feet at the waterline and 588 feet over all, the width 61 feet 10 inches, the draft 19 1/2 to 25 feet. The displacement was 9,950 ts standard and fully loaded up to 13,700 ts (1945). The side armor was 5 inches thick. The construction costs are officially given as 11.3 million dollars (1934).
Overall, the compact design was a step forward compared to older heavy cruisers in terms of armament and protection, but the Tuscaloosa was top- heavy and had problems with overweight from the time it was commissioned. She was wet (flooded) in the bow area and had a greater tendency to roll in bad weather. For example, a photo from peacetime in the Strait of Magellan shows the cruiser with its forecastle almost completely under water despite the only moderately rough sea. In addition, due to the lower fuel supplies (around 2,100 to 2,200 ts), the operational radius was limited (7.110 nm at 15 knots during the war, 5,280 nm at 20 knots).
Painting and finishing
From the beginning of 1942, the Tuscaloosa was presented in a spotted camouflage (so-called splotch design according to Measure 12 mod in the official US system for ship camouflage , colors on the vertical surfaces from bottom to top were sea blue = sea blue 5-S, ocean gray = ocean gray 5 -O and haze gray = haze gray 5-H, with irregular, spot-like dividing lines). The anti-aircraft armament already consisted of 16 28 mm tubes in four quadruplets and 16 individual flak 20 mm Oerlikon, the radars were SC-1s for air searches, a SG for sea searches and two Mk 3s for fire control for the main artillery on board. In April 1944, the ship in Boston was modernized in a similar way to the surviving sister ships, with the bridge being simplified and superstructures made more compact and lower to reduce the top load. The starboard crane was dismantled. At the same time, the radar equipment (equipment now: SK for air search as a replacement for SC-1 on the foremast, 2 × SG for sea search, 2 × Mk 12 and Mk 3 for fire control) and the light anti-aircraft gun (now 6 × 4 Bofors 40 mm as a replacement for the earlier 28 mm quadruplets and 26 × 20 mm Oerlikon single tubes). The paint had been a so-called graded design according to Measure 22 with a navy blue (5-N) lower hull and haze gray (5-H) upper hull and superstructures since autumn 1942 and initially remained unchanged.
In November 1944 the Tuscaloosa was retrofitted one last time. The lighter Mk-28 radar replaced the Mk 12 on the Mk-33 fire control devices for the 5-inch guns, and the paintwork changed to a light dazzle design based on Measure 33 Design 13D (see the shipyard picture), a complex asymmetrical camouflage pattern two colors, the ocean-gray (ocean gey 5-O) surfaces of which were also carried over the deck. The contrasting color was navy blue (navy blue 5-N) on the vertical surfaces and black-blue (deck blue 20-B) on the horizontal surfaces. Incidentally, it was largely identical to the one on the sister ship San Francisco in 1944. At the end of the war in 1945, the Tuscaloosa presented itself again in Measure 22 , and in 1946 when it was decommissioned in the uniform peace gray of Measure 13 (haze gray 5-H across all verticals Surfaces). Neither a pencil-beam fighter guidance radar was installed on the Tuscaloosa (SP was planned), nor was a catapult deployed to reduce weight, as planned or implemented on sister ships.
Awards
The Tuscaloosa received seven Battle Stars for their war effort, which they survived without relevant damage or losses, but also without individual successes.
Models
In 2008 an injection-molded plastic model kit of the Tuscaloosa was brought onto the market for the first time (scale 1: 700, appearance 1942).
Literature (selection)
- Norman Friedman: The New Orleans Class. In: Warship. Vol. 11, 1979, ISSN 0142-6222 , p. 146 ff.
- Norman Friedman: US Cruisers. An illustrated design history. Arms and Armor Press, London et al. 1985, ISBN 0-85368-651-3 .
- Stefan Terzibaschitsch : US Navy cruiser. From the Omaha class (1922) to the Long Beach. Koehler, Herford 1984, ISBN 3-7822-0348-8 .
- Steve Wiper: New Orleans Class Cruisers (= Warship Pictorial. No. 7). Classic Warships, Tucson AZ 2000, ISBN 0-9654829-6-0 .
- Regarding technology, reference can also be made to the monographs on the sister ship San Francisco (CA-38), in particular: Chuck Hansen: USS San Francisco, A Technical History . 2nd edition, 1981 and Steve Wiper: USS San Francisco CA-38 , Tucson 1999.
Web links
- US Navy photos of the USS Tuscaloosa (English)
Remarks
- ↑ In contrast to many literature reports, the US Navy officially does not use a hyphen between the parts of the registration number.
- ↑ Some of the data differ in the literature. The official information from DANFS is used here.
- ↑ Square feet (Eng .: square feet)
- ↑ Values for the - in spite of the additional diesel engines installed only there and on the following ships, which require additional space and supplies - to this extent largely identical sister ship San Francisco