''Italic text'' The ''Des Moines''-class cruisers were a trio of very large U.S. Navy heavy cruisers commissioned in 1948 and 1949. They were the last of the all-gun heavy cruisers, exceeded in size in the American navy only by the s that straddled the line between heavy cruiser and

battlecruiser The battlecruiser (also written as battle cruiser or battle-cruiser) was a type of capital ship of the first half of the 20th century. These were similar in displacement, armament and cost to battleships, but differed in form and balance of attr ...

. Two were decommissioned by 1961 but the , served until 1975. is a museum ship in

Quincy, Massachusetts Quincy ( ) is a coastal U.S. city in Norfolk County, Massachusetts, United States. It is the largest city in the county and a part of Greater Boston, Metropolitan Boston as one of Boston's immediate southern suburbs. Its population in 2020 was 1 ...

; the other two were

scrapped Scrap consists of recyclable materials, usually metals, left over from product manufacturing and consumption, such as parts of vehicles, building supplies, and surplus materials. Unlike waste, scrap has monetary value, especially recovered me ...

Description

Derived from the heavy cruisers, they were larger, had an improved machinery layout and carried a new design of auto-loading, rapid-fire 8"/55 gun (the Mk16). The improved Mk16 guns of the main battery were the first auto-loading 8" guns fielded by the US Navy and allowed a much higher rate of fire than earlier designs, capable of sustaining eight shots per minute per barrel, about twice that previous heavy cruisers could. The auto-loading mechanism could function at any elevation, giving some anti-aircraft capability. While the secondary battery of six twin 5"/38 Mk12 DP guns was essentially unchanged from the and ''Baltimore''-class cruisers, the ''Des Moines'' class carried a stronger battery of small-caliber anti-aircraft guns, including 12 twin 3-inch/50 Mk27 and later Mk33 guns, that were considered superior to the earlier ships' quad-mounted 40mm Bofors against contemporary airborne threats.

History

Twelve ships of the class were planned, but only three were completed: , and , with USS ''Dallas'' (CA-140) canceled when approximately 28 percent complete. Their speed made them valuable to escort carrier groups and they were useful in showing the flag in goodwill visits. The first two were decommissioned in 1961 and 1959, respectively, but ''Newport News'' remained in commission until 1975, serving for a long period (1962–1968) as United States Second Fleet flagship, and providing valuable gunfire support off

Vietnam Vietnam or Viet Nam ( vi, Việt Nam, ), officially the Socialist Republic of Vietnam,., group="n" is a country in Southeast Asia, at the eastern edge of mainland Southeast Asia, with an area of and population of 96 million, making i ...

from 1967 to 1973. The ship's missions included shelling targets close to the North Vietnam shoreline. In August 1972 she raided Haiphong harbor at night with other US Navy ships to shell coastal defenses,

Surface-to-air missile A surface-to-air missile (SAM), also known as a ground-to-air missile (GTAM) or surface-to-air guided weapon (SAGW), is a missile designed to be launched from the ground to destroy aircraft or other missiles. It is one type of anti-aircraft syst ...

sites and Cat Bi airfield. ''Newport News'' was the last active all-gun cruiser (serving 25.5 years continuously) and the first completely air-conditioned surface ship in the U.S. Navy. ''Salem'' is a museum ship in

. ''Newport News'' was laid up at the Philadelphia Naval Shipyard and scrapped in 1993, and ''Des Moines'' was scrapped in 2006–2007. ''Dallas'' (CA-140) and eight other ships (CA-141 through CA-143 and CA-149 through CA-153) were canceled at the end of

World War II World War II or the Second World War, often abbreviated as WWII or WW2, was a world war that lasted from 1939 to 1945. It involved the vast majority of the world's countries—including all of the great powers—forming two opposin ...

Ships in class

Gallery

File:USS Des Moines (CA-134) underway at sea, circa in the late 1950s.jpg, USS ''Des Moines'' File:USS Salem (CA-139) at anchor off Sardinia on 19 May 1950 (NH 97604).jpg, USS ''Salem'' File:USS Newport News (CA-148) underway on 1 February 1960 (NH 106502).jpg, USS ''Newport News''

References

Bibliography

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External links

Des Moines class cruiser
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