laststandonzombieisland

Some 75 years ago this month.

You could almost mistake her for a slimmed-down Iowa-class battleship at first. That was easy to do with a ship that had a full-load displacement of some 17,000 tons, ran nearly 700 feet long, had a very similar 3+3+3 main gun layout, two funnels, and up to eight inches of armor.

“Aerial of the Baltimore-class heavy cruiser USS Columbus (CA 74) moored to Berth 8, Grand Harbor, Valeta, Malta, altitude 100 feet, S.E. direction.”

Photograph released January 1951. U.S. Navy Photograph, now in the collections of the National Archives. 80-G-426894

The above was during Columbus’s 12 June 1950 to 5 October 1951 stint as flagship for Commander-in-Chief, Naval Forces Eastern Atlantic and Mediterranean (CINCNELM), ADM Robert B. Carney (USNA 1916).

Too late to see combat in WWII, Columbus was still a “war baby,” commissioned 8 June 1945.

Joining the Pacific Fleet five months after VJ Day, she reached the old German China colony of Tsingtao on 13 January 1946 for occupation duty, serving off and on as the cruiser flagship in Chinese waters through June 1947.

Transferring to the Atlantic Fleet in 1948, she often served as a flagship for the 6th Fleet, as seen above. I mean, why wouldn’t she? She was a beautiful ship worthy of an admiral’s flag.

USS Columbus (CA 74) 3 November 1952 Mediterranean Sea USN 482321

After another spin in the Pacific from 1955-1959, she began a three-year reconstruction conversion from an all-gun cruiser to a huge guided missile cruiser, recommissioning as CG-12 in December 1962 to serve for another 14 years as a Cold War sentinel in the Atlantic and Med.

She decommissioned on 31 January 1975, capping just a few months under 30 years of faithful service, but never fired a shot in anger other than her work during the Road’s End scuttling of 24 captured ex-IJN submarines on April Fool’s Day 1946 off Goto-Retto.

Sometimes all you have to do is look mean to get the word across.