Northampton-class cruiser (2f/2m).
L/B/D:
600.3 × 66.1 × 23 (183m × 20.1m × 7m). Tons:
11,420 disp. Hull:
steel. Comp.:
735-1,200. Arm.:
9 × 8 (3×3), 8 × 5, 32 × 40mm, 27 × 20mm; 6 × 21TT; 4 aircraft. Armor:
3 belt, 1 deck. Mach.:
geared turbines, 107,000 shp, 4 screws; 32.5 kts. Built:
Newport News Shipbuilding & Dry Dock Co., Newport News, Va.; 1931.
While many ships have been ahead of their time in a technological sense, USS Augusta is best remembered for her involvement in incidents that prefigured great events, especially the United States' war with Japan and the founding of the United Nations after World War II. The third ship named for the northern Georgia city, Augusta was officially classified as a heavy cruiser following the Washington Naval Conference of 1930. First deployed as flagship of the Scouting Force, she entered the Pacific in 1932 to take part in fleet maneuvers. When these were completed, she and other units remained on the West Coast as a deterrent to Japanese aggression in Manchuria, which had been invaded in 1931. The following year, she relieved her sister ship
USS Houston as flagship of the Asiatic Fleet. Operating out of the Philippines, she visited ports in Australia, China, and throughout southeast Asia, where she was known as "Augie Maru." In August 1933, she carried the U.S. delegation to the funeral of Japan's Fleet Admiral Heihachiro Togo, hero of Tsushima and Port Arthur. Flying the flag of Admiral Harry E. Yarnell, in July 1937 Augusta was part of the first U.S. fleet to visit the Soviet port of Vladivostok in fifteen years.
Returning to Tsingtao just as hostilities between Japan and China were intensifying, Admiral Yarnell ordered Augusta to Shanghai to protect U.S. interests there. Chinese bombers mistakenly attacked the ship on August 14 and six days later a Chinese antiaircraft shell landed on the ship, killing one sailor. Augusta remained at Shanghai through the new year, when she carried survivors of
USS Panay, sunk by Japanese aircraft on December 12, to the Philippines. She returned to Chinese waters until late September 1940 before sailing for the United States.
After an extensive overhaul at Mare Island, Augusta sailed for Newport, Rhode Island, where Admiral Ernest J. King, Commander in Chief, Atlantic Fleet, broke his flag in her in May 1941. That summer, Augusta carried President Roosevelt to the Atlantic Conference, a series of shipboard meetings with Prime Minister Winston Churchill (aboard
HMS Prince of Wales) at Placentia Bay, Newfoundland. The leaders discussed greater U.S. involvement against German U-boats, drew up a set of aims for the war (in which the United States was still neutral), and established broad principles for postwar policies. The principles released on August 14 were endorsed by the anti-Axis nations and became the basis of the United Nations Declaration of January 1942.
Augusta saw no combat until October of that year, when she sailed for French Morocco as flagship of Rear Admiral H. Kent Hewitt's Task Force 34 in Operation Torch; among her distinguished complement was Major General George S. Patton. Following this campaign, Augusta took part in a number of North Atlantic convoys and other operations between New England, Newfoundland, and Iceland. On June 6, 1944, Augusta was one of three U.S. cruisers in the Eastern Naval Task Force supporting British D-day landings on Normandy. General Omar Bradley and his staff were aboard from June 5 until they went ashore on the 10th. Augusta then proceeded to the Mediterranean where she took part in Operation Dragoon, the Allied landing around Toulon and Marseilles, during which Navy Secretary James Forrestal joined the ship.
Following V-E Day, which found her once again stateside, on June 13 Augusta embarked President Harry S. Truman, Secretary of State James F. Byrnes, and Fleet Admiral William D. Leahy, bound for Antwerp en route to the Potsdam Conference; they re-embarked on July 28 at Portsmouth, England. Decommissioned in 1946, Augusta remained part of the reserve fleet at Philadelphia until 1959, when she was sold for scrap to Robert Benjamin of Panama City, Florida.
Morton, Atlantic Meeting. U.S. Navy, DANFS.
