Call Sign Thunder: Last of the All-Gun Cruisers

USS Newport News (CA 148) at sea in September 1951, roughly a decade before her extensive modernization into a flagship for the 2nd Fleet. (National Archives and Records Administration, 80-G-442188 via Naval History and Heritage Command Photo Curator/ Flickr)

By M.C. Farrington
HRNM Historian

When USS Newport News (CA 148) was commissioned on January 29, 1949, the war that brought her into existence, the Second World War, had been over for over three years, but the next major conflict for the United States Navy, the Cold War, was in its infancy. The second of three Des Moines-class heavy cruisers to be commissioned (of nine originally ordered), Newport News ultimately served longer than her sister ships through the thick of the Cold War at Sea, from the Cuban Missile Crisis to the Vietnam War.

A roughly 15 foot-long model of the heavy cruiser USS Newport News (CA 148) dominates the War at Sea area of the new exhibit, The Ten Thousand-Day War at Sea: The US Navy in Vietnam, 1950-1975, which opened in October 2019. The display also features the heavy cruiser's name plate. (M.C. Farrington)  

Newport News was the 18th and last cruiser constructed at Newport News Shipbuilding and Dry Dock Company, the sprawling shipyard on the banks of the James River, but the battle to name her for the city that the shipyard called home began long before construction began in November 1945. On April 17, 1944, the Peninsula Chamber of Commerce started a petition drive to give the as-yet unnamed vessel the name Newport News, which quickly reached 40,000 signatures. Five days later, a telegram was sent to Navy Secretary Frank Knox requesting Navy Department approval. Less than a week later, however, Knox died, and the decision fell to his successor, James Forrestal. The day of her launching, March 6, 1947, was the birthday of former shipyard president Homer L. Ferguson. It was proclaimed “Newport News Cruiser Day” by Newport News Mayor R. Cowles Taylor, whose wife Elise served as sponsor, and a crowd of 20,000 braved heavy weather to witness the commissioning at Newport News Shipbuilding.

The Name Board of USS Newport News currently on display above the model at the Hampton Roads Naval Museum. (Naval History and Heritage Command 1991-167-A)

Newport News, measuring in at 716 feet, 6 inches in length and displacing 21,500 tons fully loaded, was larger and heavier than any of the battleships of the Great White Fleet four decades before, yet she was a bit smaller than the 887 foot-long Iowa-class battleships that were her contemporaries. When delivered, she was equipped with nine 8-inch/ 55 caliber rapid-fire guns, 12 5-inch/ 38 caliber guns, 24 3-inch/ 50 caliber guns, and 12 20mm antiaircraft guns. This is the configuration shown on the 15 foot, two-inch-long model currently in the HRNM gallery, but the majority of the 3-inch and 20mm guns were removed after her first decade in service.

From its 8-inch rapid fire and 5-inch guns and their fire control systems right down to stanchions, deck gear and boat booms, the Des Moines-class cruiser model depicting USS Newport News (CA 148) is rich in detail.  (M.C. Farrington)

The aft main deck of the model complete with 3-inch/ 50 caliber gun mounts in gun tubs on either side of the fantail. The model also features an aircraft crane similar to those also found on battleships, but by the time the Des Moines-class cruisers were entering the fleet in the late-1940s, there was no necessity to carry floatplanes and the steam catapults they required for launching. (M.C. Farrington) 

The 5-inch gun turrets ahead of and on either side of the bridge remained for the cruiser's service life, yet most  of the 20mm antiaircraft guns mounted around the decks were removed during the first decade after commissioning.  The superstructure aft of the bridge of Newport News was expanded for flag staff and communications spaces between 1961 and 1962. (M.C. Farrington)

The model's starboard side amidships showing 3-inch mounts on either side of a stowed 26-foot motor whale boat. Note the small fire control tub supporting the 3-inch guns on the left and the much larger Mk 37 director on the right capable of supporting either the 5-inch or 8-inch guns.  (M.C. Farrington)

Newport News spent her first decade serving as Sixth Fleet flagship on eight separate occasions, responding to crises such as those in Syria and Lebanon in 1957 and 1958, and steamed more than 1,200 miles in 40 hours to come to the aid of Earthquake survivors in Morocco in 1960. She underwent a modernization program starting in 1961, the superstructure amidships was expanded for flag spaces and enhanced communications equipment, including a large Naval Tactical Data System antenna that loomed over the forecastle, was added, and the cruiser became the Second Fleet flagship in April of the following year. Her first test as a command ship occurred when tactical command over the quarantine of Cuba during the Cuban Missile Crisis was directed from the cruiser. 

The cruiser Newport News (CA 148), which for most of its service left was based at naval Station Norfolk, Virginia, fires a salvo off the coast of South Vietnam in June 1972 during her third combat deployment to Vietnam.  The ship was instrumental in providing gunfire support to Republic of Vietnam forces as they countered the Viet Cong and North Vietnamese regulars during their Easter Offensive earlier that spring. (US Navy Photo 1141898 via Cold War Gallery/ Flickr)

On her first deployment to the waters off Vietnam from October 1967 to April 1968, Newport News participated in Operation Sea Dragon, expending 59,241 rounds of high explosive ammunition and earning the Navy Unit Commendation. The enemy answered with over 300 rounds in response during 17 separate attacks, yet she was never hit. Her second deployment from December 1968 to June 1969 was similarly successful, and the ship garnered the Meritorious Unit Commendation. The most demanding deployment to Vietnam started in April 1972, during which she led the first cruiser-destroyer surface actions against Haiphong Harbor in North Vietnam.

Sailors from the Norfolk-based USS Gettysburg (CG 64), along with Conservator Brian Potter of the Office of the Curator of Models (looking away from the camera) move a 15 foot-long model of USS Newport News (CA 148) into the gallery of the Hampton Roads Naval Museum in September 2019. (M.C. Farrington)

The darkest day of the cruiser’s active service occurred towards the end of her third Vietnam deployment while providing gunfire support off the coast of the DMZ. On October 1, 1972, a faulty fuse within an 8-inch round within the bore of the center gun of the number two turret caused it caused it to detonate at the moment of firing. The force of the explosion vented into the turret itself and caused over 700 pounds of powder on the three hoists leading down to the weapons magazines to also explode. By some miracle the furious flames stopped short of the magazines themselves in time for them to be flooded by the crew. Twenty Sailors were killed and 38 were injured. Despite suffering a catastrophic accident that could very well have destroyed the ship, Newport News continued her deployment until December.

Conservator Brian Potter of the Office of the Curator of Models, located at the Naval Surface Warfare Center in Bethesda, Maryland, calls out instructions as Sailors from USS Gettysburg (CG 64) lower a model of USS Newport News (CA 148) into position at the Hampton Roads Naval Museum in September 2019. (M.C. Farrington)

A few weeks after her final return from Vietnam, a Virginian-Pilot story revealed the Navy’s plans for the cruiser to become a museum ship on display near the Mariners’ Museum located in the City of Newport News. Instead, she remained in active service for two more years. Plans to replace the number two turret with a turret from sister ship Des Moines also came to naught.  Newport News finally officially ended her active service at Naval Station Norfolk, where her commissioning pennant was lowered for the last time on June 27, 1975. 

USS Newport News (CA 148) moored at Southern Scrapping Company, New Orleans, in 1993. (Operations Specialist 2nd Class John Bouvia via Wikimedia Commons)

Newport News was taken to the Inactive Ship Maintenance Facility in Philadelphia, where she spent the following decade slowly wasting away with an uncertain future. Plans emerged during the 1980s for the City of Duluth, Minnesota, to procure Newport News for their own waterfront museum, but those plans too fizzled, and her last journey ended at the Southern Scrapping Company in Louisiana after she was sold in February 1993.

Curator of Models Dana Wegner, Conservator Brian Potter, and Assistant Curator Jennifer Marland from the Office of the Curator of Models, located at the Naval Surface Warfare Center in Bethesda, Maryland, conduct a post-delivery inspection of the ¼-inch to one-foot scale model of the Heavy Cruiser Newport News (CA 148) after it was installed in the Hampton Roads Naval Museum gallery. (M.C. Farrington)  

 

It might come as no surprise that the cruiser Newport News was built at Newport News Shipbuilding. What might surprise some admirers of the finely detailed model is that it was made at the very same shipyard, at the same time, as the ship it represents, but not at Newport News Shipbuilding. It was constructed of wood and brass, with linen and wire lines, by Bethlehem Steel at its Fore River Shipyard in Quincy, Massachusetts, under the same contract as the ship it represents. How can this be? The answer is that the model originally was not of USS Newport News at all, but USS Salem (CA 139). The model today remains as it was configured when that ship was commissioned on May 14, 1949.

The starboard side of the model of USS Newport News while it was still on display at the National Museum of the US Navy at the Washington Navy Yard, showing the extreme detail shipwrights at Fore River Shipyard put into the model when it was built there as USS Salem during the late-1940s. (Cold War Gallery via Flickr)

Although the model does not specifically depict Newport News, the three Des Moines-class cruisers deviated very little in appearance when they were originally commissioned. By the terms of the contract to build Salem, the configuration of the ship had to be shown in exacting detail. “If an object on the ship was six or more inches, it had to be represented on the model,” said Assistant Curator Jennifer Marland of the Office of the Curator of Models in Bethesda, Maryland.

The 1/4-inch to one foot scale model of USS Newport News (CA 148) as it appeared in the "Lion's Den" area in front of a recreation of the cruiser's bridge within the Cold War gallery of the National Museum of the US Navy from 2006 to 2019. (Cold War Gallery via Flickr)

The Salem–Newport News model was first put on display with the Massachusetts Institute of Technology’s NROTC Unit from 1951 to 1968 before starting a southern migration with stops at the Pentagon from 1969 to 1977, the Naval Academy from 1983 to 1987, the Cold War Gallery of the National Museum of the US Navy from 2006 to 2019, and in September 2019, this huge reminder of American firepower that answered to the call sign, "Thunder," moved to its current location at the Hampton Roads Naval Museum to be a signature part of The Ten Thousand-Day War at Sea exhibit.

Seventy-Five Years Ago: FDR's Last Mission

USS Quincy (CA 71), seen here in San Francisco Bay after her return from the Western Pacific in the fall of 1945, was home to President Franklin D. Roosevelt and key members of his administration during a month-long, 14,000-mile diplomatic mission from January 23 to February 27, beginning and ending in Newport News, Virginia. (Naval History and Heritage Command image)

By M.C. Farrington
HRNM Historian

President Franklin Delano Roosevelt’s last, and longest-lasting, diplomatic mission began in secrecy.

At about 10:20 pm on January 22, 1945, the President slipped out of an entrance under the Bureau of Printing and Engraving Annex opposite the National Mall from the White House, where he had been sworn in for his fourth term four days before. Roosevelt boarded a train and traveled through the night, coming to a stop before dawn at Pier Number Six within the sprawling U.S. Army Port of Embarkation in Newport News. The cruiser USS Quincy (CA 71) had been waiting there since 5:37 in the afternoon the day before. Marines who had been patrolling the pier since five that morning watched the President and over 25 people in his entourage, accompanied by 10 Secret Service agents, board.

Captain Elliott M. Senn, Quincy’s commanding officer, noted, “By request, no honors, other than sideboys, were rendered the President as he arrived aboard.”

After a working party of dozens of Sailors loaded baggage aboard Quincy, Roosevelt gave Captain Senn the order to proceed. One minute later, Quincy cast off her lines and headed for Chesapeake Bay. Although by this time the Battle of the Atlantic was largely over, the task force performed its mission as though an attack could ensue at any moment. 

After passing through the Thimble Shoal Channel, Task Group 21.5 assembled with Quincy as its flagship.  Joining them for the first part of the 4,883-mile journey to the island of Malta were USS Satterlee (DD 626), USS Herndon (DD 638), and USS Tillman (DD 641), which formed an antisubmarine screen while the cruiser Springfield (CL 66) fell in behind Quincy for the journey to Bermuda.

Satterlee detached from the group late on the 23rd, followed by Herndon and Tillman on the morning of the 26th. At Bermuda they were replaced by Task Unit 21.5.3., comprised of USS Carmick (DD 493), Doyle (DD 494), and Endicott (DD 495) for the second part of the journey to Malta, which took them to a point 300 miles south of the Azores. There, Springfield was replaced on the 28th by TU 21.5.4 comprised of the cruiser Savannah (Cl 42) and the destroyers Baldwin (DD 624), Frankford (DD 497), and Murphy (DD 603).

Despite some false alarms over unsubstantiated U-boats on January 29, for the most part the sea itself proved the most formidable adversary to many in Roosevelt’s entourage, including his daughter Anna Roosevelt Bottiger and her husband John.

The sea, however, didn’t faze the President.  A lifelong sailor and naval enthusiast and Assistant Secretary of the Navy in Woodrow Wilson's administration over two decades before, Roosevelt took particular delight in the modifications that had been made to the great warship in the months before his transit.

Allied leaders pose in the courtyard of Livadia Palace, Yalta, during the Argonaut conference in early February 1945. Those seated are (from left to right): Prime Minister Winston Churchill (UK); President Franklin D. Roosevelt (USA); and Premier Josef Stalin (USSR). Also present are  Admiral of the Fleet Sir Andrew Cunningham, R.N., Air Chief Marshall Sir Charles Portal, R.A.F. (both standing behind Churchill); and Fleet Admiral William D. Leahy, USN, (standing behind Roosevelt). Note ornate carpets under the chairs. Photograph from the Army Signal Corps Collection in the U.S. National Archives.

Quincy had been selected to transport Roosevelt to the Argonaut conference more than three months before, and in September extensive work was done to the cruiser in Boston to make her wheelchair accessible. Two special gangplanks and an elevator were added to the vessel and two custom-built boats were also added for Roosevelt’s use in Malta and the other diplomatic initiatives he would pursue on the over 14,000-mile journey.

“The sea was moderate,” recalled Fleet Admiral William D. Leahy, FDR’s chief of staff, “and we made a speed of twenty-one knots with a zig-zag course to avoid submarine attack; covered by destroyer escorts, lights out at night, and no radio communications at any time.”

Capt. Senn recalled later that Roosevelt "was not disturbed at all by the first few days of rough seas out of Newport News, and was a merry guest on January 30, when rival bakers aboard [Quincy] baked five grand cakes for the occasion."  On that day and the day following, the destroyers Laub (DD 613), Nields (DD 616) and Champlin (DD 601) joined the task force for the final leg of the journey to Malta. 

The ships and their crews, most of which like USS Quincy were battle-hardened veterans of operations from Operation TORCH in North Africa in November 1942 to NEPTUNE on D-Day in June 1944, helped make possible FDR's status as one of the "Big Three" convening at a former Imperial Russian palace in the Crimea.

“During our ten days’ cruise at sea on the ‘Quincy,’ the President held daily conferences on problems expected to arise at the Crimea meetings,” wrote Leahy. And the potential problems were formidable indeed.   

Before the airborne leg of the journey was to begin, however, the first order of business was to meet the other friendly member of the three, Winston Churchill, who was waiting in Malta.  Their relationship grew close in August 1941 after Roosevelt slipped away from Washington DC on a supposed fishing trip and resurfaced in Placentia Bay, Newfoundland aboard the cruiser USS Augusta (CA 31), where he met Churchill who had arrived aboard the battleship HMS Prince of Wales. The Atlantic Charter they released after the Arcadia conference detailed intentions for a postwar world which they hoped to codify at Yalta.  That is, if the two could agree upon actually meeting Marshal Josef Stalin there.    
During the journey radio silence had to be broken in order to address Churchill's protests about the venue for the Argonaut conference.  Earlier he had told presidential advisor Harry Hopkins "that if we had spent ten years on research, we could not have found a worse place in the world than [Yalta]..."

Despite their differences during nearly a dozen wartime meetings, Churchill, who wore his blue British colonel's uniform during most public events at the time, was waiting aboard HMS Orion which approached to starboard of Quincy as the cruiser entered Grand Harbor on the morning of February 2.  According to Quincy's Dictionary of American Fighting Ships entry, "The Royal Marine band mustered on her fantail struck up the 'Star Spangled Banner,' and the prime minister doffed his hat and waved to the president, who cheerfully responded in kind. Maltese manning small boats swarmed around the ship to watch the historic occasion, and thousands more gathered along the hillside. Quincy moored starboard side to Boat House Wharf, French Creek, at 1001."

British Foreign Secretary Sir Anthony Eden later recalled: 

As the great warship sailed into the battered harbor, every vessel was manned, every roof and vantage point crammed with spectators.  While the bands played and amid so much that reeked of war, on the bridge, just discernible to the naked eye, sat one civilian figure... All heads were turned his way and a sudden quietness fell.  It was one of those moments when all seems to stand still and one is conscious of a mark in history.

It had not been an easy journey for Prime Minister Churchill, who developed a temperature of 102 as he flew from London on the 29th in a C-54 Skymaster Gen. Henry "Hap" Arnold had lent him. Despite this, he seemed back to normal and, while somewhat irascible, was otherwise in good health.     

Prime Minister Winston L. S. Churchill of the United Kingdom. Portrait inscribed to USS Quincy (CA 71), when Churchill was on board at Alexandria, Egypt, February 15 1945, for post-Yalta conferences with President Roosevelt. (Naval History and Heritage Command image)

Roosevelt, by comparison, was in far graver shape, even with the rest he had been able to get aboard Quincy during the voyage from Newport News.  Vice Admiral Ross McIntire, FDR's personal physician, had vouched for the President's vitality during his recent successful campaign against Governor Thomas Dewey, but accompanying the President aboard Quincy along with Commander Howard Bruenn, a cardiologist, McIntire knew that his health was deteriorating rapidly.  An exam conducted nine months before at Bethesda Naval Hospital found that the 62 year-old Roosevelt had acute bronchitis, heart disease, failure of the left ventricle of the heart, as well as skyrocketing blood pressure.  A decade after receiving an average reading of 136 over 78, the President's blood pressure reading before Yalta had reached a life-threatening 240 over 130.   

From the left, Vice Admiral H. Kent Hewitt, who in 1942 led U.S. Amphibious forces from his headquarters at the Nansemond Hotel in the Ocean View section of Norfolk, confers with President Roosevelt along with Admiral Harold Stark, Commander, Naval Forces Europe, in Malta after the President's arrival.  (Naval History and Heritage Command image)  

“Later there was much adverse comment in the American press about the condition of the President’s health,” wrote Adm. Leahy long after the conference, “but in working with him every day I saw no sign of deterioration of his physical or mental condition either at sea or ashore after we reached Europe.”

Despite the physical distance between them, the Soviet Union and the United States were closer than they had ever been at that moment, largely due to FDR's policies, yet it could be argued that because of this closeness the Soviets took the American president's generosity for granted. During FDR’s first term, American diplomatic recognition had been extended to the Soviet government for the first time.  Millions of dollars in aid and equipment, including naval vessels and aircraft, had been given to the Soviets since the American entry into the war.  At the time Roosevelt left Hampton Roads for Malta, Soviet pilots were receiving training for some of their new American-made maritime patrol aircraft just south of Hampton Roads at Naval Air Station Elizabeth City.

This excerpt from the forthcoming book Churchill: A Graphic Biography by Vincent Delmas and illustrated by Christophe Regnault and Alessio Camardella, illustrates the dilemma faced by the British prime minister at Yalta regarding Poland's fate after the war. Stalin's army had completely overrun and occupied Poland before the Argonaut conference at Yalta even began. (Greenhill Books/ Dead Reckoning)

Despite benefiting from American Lend-Lease largesse, not to mention their opening of a second front in Continental Europe through the invasions of Italy and both Northern and Southern France to drain German strength from their eastern front, the Soviets wanted much, much more. To get it, Soviet agents working for the American government had penetrated the military’s secret Manhattan Project to steal nuclear weapon technology.  Diplomatic secrets were also highly prized.  Among the diplomatic contingent flying from Washington to Yalta with Secretary of State Edward R. Stettinius was Deputy Director of the Office of Special Political Affairs, Alger Hiss, who was also secretly working for the Soviet cause.

Whether Hiss nudged American diplomatic tactics at Yalta or merely informed the Soviets about his government’s negotiating positions during the talks is unclear. His cover would be blown by Time Magazine editor (and former Communist courier) Whittaker Chambers in 1948, but his denials were so convincing that the American public remained divided about his status for nearly half a century.  That is, until the Venona diplomatic intercepts of Soviet diplomatic communications declassified in the mid-1990s left little room for doubt. 


After meeting with Churchill and myriad other British and American officials throughout the day on February 2, FDR boarded a specially modified Army Air Corps VC-54C Skymaster known officially as The Flying White House, and unofficially as the Sacred Cow, at 3:30 the following morning for the seven-hour flight from Luqa Airport in Malta to Saki in the Ukrainian Soviet Socialist Republic, from which the President would endure yet another five-hour journey along winding mountain roads to Yalta, finally arriving at the Livadia Palace at a little after 6 pm, local time.

The diplomatic give-and-take (or lack thereof) during the following week would make Argonaut the most controversial of the wartime conferences between the "Big Three," but another diplomatic mission conducted by FDR before sailing back to Hampton Roads aboard Quincy would have an even longer-lasting impact upon American foreign policy as well as the American economy.