laststandonzombieisland

Here we see, some 70 years ago this month, two “all-gun” heavy cruisers, vessels which were once common just a decade before but a comparative rarity in August 1956, captured while showing their respective flags aboard.

USS Toledo (CA 133) at Vancouver, British Columbia, Canada on 4 August 1956, Walter E Frost photo, City of Vancouver Archives, AM1506-S3-3-: CVA 447-8602

Sverdlov-class light cruiser Ordzhonikidze during August 1956 at Copenhagen, Denmark. Note the flag of Admiral A.G. Golovko on the top mast. Danish Military Museum image.

The first U.S. Navy ship named for the city in Ohio, the Baltimore-class heavy cruiser USS Toledo (CA 133) was laid down on 13 September 1943 by the New York Shipbuilding Corp, launched on 6 May 1945, and commissioned post-VJ-Day at the Philadelphia Naval Shipyard on 27 October 1946. Too late for WWII, she nonetheless served two stints in Korea, mostly on the gunline, earning five battle stars for her service. She then spent a few more years on active duty before she was paid off at Long Beach on 21 May 1960, having served just under 14 years with the fleet. Moved to San Diego, she spent another 14 years in mothballs before she was disposed of in 1974 amid the post-Vietnam drawdown.

As for the 16,000-ton Ordzhonikidze, she was constructed post-war at Plant #194 (Admiralty Shipyard, Leningrad), and joined the Baltic Fleet on 31 August 1952, just months before Stalin’s demise. She spent most of her short career with the Red Banner Fleet on a series of port calls around Western Europe and Scandinavia in the 1950s, as seen above in her stop at Copenhagen. Transferred to the Black Sea Fleet in 1960, she then trained a crew from the Indonesian Navy at Sevastopol and left for Surabaya in August 1962, becoming the latter country’s first (and only) cruiser, the Kapal Republik Indonesia (Republic of Indonesia Ship) Irian (C201). However, after Sukarno broke with the Soviets in 1965, she became unsupportable and was scrapped by 1972.