Tag Archives: USS Des Moines (CA-134)

Twin bruisers

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Some 50 years ago this month, two sister sluggers, the 8-inch-gunned heavy cruisers USS Des Moines (CA-134) and Newport News (CA-148), rest on red lead row in Philadelphia, August 1976

USN Photo K-117046.

The massive Des Moines, tipping the scales at 21,000 tons, entered the fleet in November 1948 and was laid up just 13 years later, her nine 8″/55 RF Mk 16 guns quiet after a spate of Cold War service in the Mediterranean and Europe.

Sister Newport News, commissioned 1949, had a longer career and was only laid up in June 1975, a bit over a year prior to the above image. While Des Moines served in quiet strength, Newport News raised a racket in three tours on the gunline off Vietnam, earning six battle stars, two Navy Unit Commendations, one Meritorious Unit Citation, and the Republic of Viet Nam’s Gallantry Cross.

She fired more than 50,000 major-caliber rounds on 525 missions against nearly 4,000 targets and avoided at least 1,924 enemy counter-battery rounds in 46 separate incidents.

Both ships were kept in mothballs until the Cold War ended, just in case, and were only sold for scrap in the early 1990s.

42,000 ton ‘o cruisers

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Here we see the USS Des Moines (CA-134) and her sister ship USS Newport News (CA-148), laid up as part of the Bicentennial Exhibit at the Philadelphia Naval Shipyard, August 1976.

National Archives Photo K-117046

The two retired bruisers, the largest and most capable heavy heavy cruisers ever fielded by the U.S. Navy (with the exception of the Alaska-class “large cruisers”) Newport News had put in lots of heavy work on the gun line off Vietnam and was only decommissioned 27 June 1975, some 14 months prior to the above image. Des Moines, on the other hand, had been on red lead row since 6 July 1961.

The third, and unpictured, ship of the class, USS Salem (CA-139), had preceded her two sisters to early retirement and had been decommissioned on 30 January 1959 after less than a decade of service. Notably, she portrayed the German pocket battleship KMS Admiral Graf Spee (which she actually outweighed by 5,000 tons!) in the 1956 film The Battle of the River Plate.

How about a chubby German BM on Salem’s quarter deck?

Ironically, the low-mileage Salem would go on to become a museum ship in Quincy, Massachusetts in 1994 while both Des Moines and Newport News were disposed of and slowly scrapped, with CA-159 only fully dismantled in 2007.