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CA-37 Tuscaloosa

USS Tuscaloosa, a 9975-ton New Orleans class heavy cruiser, was built at Camden, New Jersey, and commissioned in August 1934. After a shakedown cruise to Argentina and Uruguay and post-shakedown overhaul, she went to the Pacific in April 1935, spending nearly four years there taking part in U.S. Fleet exercises and other activities. In January 1939 Tuscaloosa came back to the Atlantic area for Fleet Problem XX, steamed around South America during April-June, and carried President Franklin D. Roosevelt on a cruise off New England and eastern Canada in August. With the outbreak of the European war in September 1939, she began Neutrality Patrol operations. These included shadowing the German passenger liner Columbus in December, and rescuing that ship's survivors after she was scuttled.

Tuscaloosa continued her Atlantic area Neutrality Patrols in 1940 and 1941 and also took part in exercises. In February and December 1940, she hosted President Roosevelt on cruises to the west coast of South America and to the West Indies. Late in that year, she transported retired Admiral William D. Leahy to his new post as ambassador to France. As relations with Germany soured in 1941, Tuscaloosa partcipated in the Atlantic Charter conference in August and in "short of war" operations in the North Atlantic. She stayed in that area after war formally began in December and in April-September 1942 worked with the British Home Fleet in the waters between Iceland and the northern Soviet Union.

In November 1942, Tuscaloosa engaged French forces during the invasion of Morocco. She spent 1943 and the first part of 1944 on convoy, patrol and training duties in the North Atlantic. In June 1944, the cruiser supported the Normandy invasion, using her eight-inch guns to bombard German positions there and at Cherbourg. Tuscaloosa also took part in the invasion of Southern France in August.

With her Atlantic area assignments concluded, Tuscaloosa was transferred to the Pacific, where her big guns bombarded the Japanese during the Iwo Jima invasion in February 1945 and the Okinawa operation in March-June. Following Japan's surrender, she covered occupation efforts along the China and Korean coasts, work that lasted from late August until November 1945. Tuscaloosa's last active service was performed transporting service personnel home from the southern Pacific. In early February 1946, the veteran cruiser passed through the Panama Canal and steamed north to the Philadelphia Navy Yard, where she was soon decommissioned. Following thirteen years in the Atlantic Reserve Fleet, USS Tuscaloosa was stricken from the Navy list in March 1959. She was sold for scrapping a few months later.