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CA-26 Northampton

USS Northampton, a 9050-ton light cruiser built at Quincy, Massachusetts, was the first of a class of six similar ships. Commissioning in May 1930, she made a shakedown cruise to the Mediterranean and thereafter took part in the United States' Fleet's regular program of operations and exercises. Reclassified as a heavy cruiser in July 1931, she received a change in hull number from CL-27 to CA-27. Northampton primarily served in the Atlantic and Caribbean areas until 1932, then was mainly in the Pacific. In mid-1941, she steamed across that ocean to visit Australia.

On 7 December 1941, Northampton was at sea with the USS Enterprise task force. The next day, she entered Pearl Harbor to witness first hand the devastation caused by Japan's suprise attack. Her early wartime operations were primarily in the Hawaiian area, but in late January 1942 she went to the central Pacific, where on 1 February she bombarded Wotje, in the Marshall Islands. A second bombardment, of Wake Island, was delivered on 24 February. Northampton was unsuccessfully attacked by Japanese aircraft at that time. In March, she operated with the carrier task force that struck Marcus Island and the next month took part in the Doolittle Raid on Japan. She accompanied USS Enterprise to the south Pacific in May 1942 and escorted her through the Battle of Midway in early June.

Northampton returned to the southern Pacific in August 1942 to participate in the Guadalcanal campaign. Serving for the next two months with carrier task forces, she was present when USS Wasp was sunk by a Japanese submarine on 15 September and accompanied USS Hornet during the 26 October Battle of the Santa Cruz Islands. When that carrier was disabled by enemy torpedoes and bombs, Northampton tried to tow her out of danger, but had to abandon Hornet to her fate after another air attack inflicted fatal damage.

During November, Northampton joined a cruiser-destroyer surface action group. On the night of 30 November 1942, her task force intercepted several Japanese destroyers off Guadalcanal. The resulting Battle of Tassafaronga was a shattering experience for the U.S. Navy, which received further proof of the enemy's superiority in night gun and torpedo combat. Northampton was one of four U.S. heavy cruisers hit by Japanese torpedoes. A serious fire amidships prevented damage control parties from controlling her flooding, and she sank stern-first three hours after she was hit.

USS Northampton's wreck was found and examined in 1991-92. Her hull is intact and upright on the bottom of Guadalcanal's "Iron Bottom Sound", some two-thousand feet below the surface. Her guns are still trained out to port, as they were nearly fifty years earlier when she engaged Japanese destroyers in the Battle of Tassafaronga.