First All-Missile Cruiser
3 NOVEMBER 1962
FIRST ALL-MISSILE CRUISER
With the WWII Pacific battle for the Marshalls winding down and the fight to retake the Marianas just beginning, our Navy laid the keel for the second Oregon City-class heavy cruiser, CA-123, at Bethlehem Steel’s shipyard in Quincy, Massachusetts. Her construction outlasted WWII, however, and she was not commissioned until June 1946 as USS ALBANY, our fourth warship remembering the New York State capital. ALBANY joined the Atlantic Fleet, serving multiple tours in the Mediterranean with the 6th Fleet.
By the 1950s, our Navy was well into trials with a variety of guided missiles, an effective surface-to-air alternative to AAA and flak guns. The early Terrier guided missile had given way to the improved Tartar medium range, and the Talos long range weapon systems. In an age when nuclear arms dominated both strategic and tactical thinking, these, and the concurrently developed ASROC anti-submarine missile, could all deploy nuclear warheads. By the end of that decade the latter two of the “3-Ts” were ready to be deployed operationally. On 28 May 1958, the WWII era light cruiser GALVESTON (CL-93) became the first to have Talos missile launchers added to her existing weaponry. Several more existing cruisers were also modified to carry the Mach 2.8 system capable of reaching 24,000 feet at a range of 50 miles. Then a month later, on 30 June 1958, ALBANY was officially decommissioned and entered the Boston Naval Shipyard for a radical conversion. Her main battery of nine 8″ guns was removed, and in their place Mk-12 Talos launchers were mounted on the stem and stern. Two Mk-11 Tartar missile launchers were added amidships and an ASROC rocket-powered missile launcher was mounted. Only two of the cruiser’s 5″ guns were left in place as were her six torpedo tubes. At that moment the first warship to undergo complete conversion to guided missile weaponry, ALBANY was re-commissioned this day at CG-10. For the next five years she cruised the Mediterranean and North Atlantic, visiting numerous ports in an impressive show of American naval might.
Following a second modernization in the late 1960s, ALBANY cruised again in the Atlantic and Mediterranean. She served for four years as the 6th Fleet flagship at Gaeta, Italy, in the 1970s. By then our Navy had deployed a fleet of guided missile cruisers, and missile technology was being applied to destroyers as well. Having replaced guns in the anti-aircraft mission, guided missiles continue to be a critical segment of our naval defense in the 21st century.
ALBANY cruised for the last time in 1980, after which she was retired to the James River ghost (reserve) fleet. She rested for another decade, until being scrapped 12 August 1990.
Watch for more “Today in Naval History” 10 NOV 22
CAPT James Bloom, Ret.
Cooney, David M. A Chronology of the U.S. Navy: 1775-1965. New York, NY: Franklin Watts, Inc., 1965, p. 458.
Department of the Navy, Naval History Division. Dictionary of American Naval Fighting Ships, Vol 1 “A”. Washington, DC: GPO, 1991, p. 131.
“USS Albany (CG-10)” Overnight website. AT: http://www.navysite.de/cg/cg10.htm, retrieved 9 December 2016.
