laststandonzombieisland

A special Warship Wednesday today. A moment frozen in time, some 80 years ago today.

The afternoon of 6 August 1945.

President Harry S. Truman and his party aboard the Northampton-class “medium-heavy” cruiser USS Augusta (CA-31) for the return trip from the Berlin (Potsdam) Conference are seen watching boxing bouts. 

The bespectacled Missouri National Guard artillery colonel and Great War veteran is seen ringside, wearing a driving (newsboy) cap. He is flanked by Secretary of State James F. Byrnes (left) and Fleet Admiral William D. Leahy (right). Note the crew in crisp summer whites and an obsolete Curtiss SOC-1 Seagull floatplane on the catapult above.

Laid down on 18 December 1924 as a “treaty” light cruiser, Augusta was nominally a 9,000-ton ship with a veneer of armor plate (as thin as 0.75 inches on the turrets, only 1.25 inches on the Conning Tower, and a maximum belt of 3.75 inches). She was later reclassified as a heavy cruiser because she and her sisters carried 8″/55 guns.

Serving with the Asiatic Fleet pre-war, a 1940 refit saw her as one of the first dozen warships to receive the early RCA CXAM-1 radar, and she was sent to the Atlantic in 1941 where ADM King used her as a flagship and she was pressed into service as FDR’s flagship for the Newfoundland conference, tied up next to the much larger battleship HMS Prince of Wales which had carried Churchill to Argentia.

Very active during WWII, she remained a ship that “stars fell upon,” carrying Patton during the Torch Landings in North Africa, Bradley during Overlord off Normandy, Chidlaw to Corsica, and hosted Forrestal during the Dragoon landings in Southern France (during which she also fired all but the last 50 rounds of 8-inch in her magazine during NGFS ashore).

Augusta was further key to history as Truman was on the ship when he got the news that Hiroshima had been hit by the first atomic bomb (Little Boy) used in warfare, and held the first press conference on the matter with embarked war correspondents. 

The news hit right before the above boxing match.

Besides all the American “who’s who,” Augusta also hosted King George VI at least twice while in Europe for the conference.

She put into Norfolk on 7 August 1945 to disembark Truman and company, spent several months in “Magic Carpet” operations, bringing GIs home from Europe, and decommissioned on 16 July 1946.

Augusta was lucky; three of her five sisters– Northampton, Chicago, and Houston— were sunk in the Pacific during the war.

Laid up in mothballs at Philadelphia while Truman was still in office, Augusta was disposed of in 1960 and sold to the breakers.

Augusta received but three battle stars for her World War II service. Her name has been recycled for an Independence-variant littoral combat ship (LCS-34) that was commissioned in 2023.