Shortly after 0800 on 21 August 2006, nearly 58 years after her commissioning, the heavy cruiser Des Moines (CA-134) departed Philadelphia under tow by a Military Sealift Command tug, bound for a scrap yard in Brownsville, Texas. Placed in reserve on 6 July 1961 and stricken from the Naval Vessel Register three decades later on 9 July 1991, the 20,950-ton, 716.5-foot-long cruiser had been on hold for nearly a quarter century as a possible museum ship while various groups tried— and ultimately failed—to raise sufficient funds and civic interest to preserve her. Of her two completed sister ships, the Newport News (CA-148) was scrapped in 1993, and the Salem (CA-139) survives, if precariously, at Quincy, Massachusetts.
The largest and most formidable gun cruisers ever built, the Des Moines class was designed around an innovative automatic triple-mount 8-inch/50-caliber main battery gun system that employed power-rammed metal powder canisters instead of fabric powder bags and could be loaded from any angle of train or elevation. The 451-ton turrets were a development of a twin, automatic 6- inch/47-caliber gun mount introduced for the Worcester (CL-144) -class light cruisers, and, like the smaller guns, could be employed against both surface and air targets. In antiair mode, the 8-inch guns were controlled by any of the four Mk 37 gun fire control systems, which also controlled the six twin 5-inch/38-caliber dual-purpose mounts.
The automatic 8-inch mounts fired the same projectiles as those on the preceding Baltimore (CA-68) and Oregon City (CA-122) -class heavy cruisers, with the 355-pound projectiles having a range of some 30,050 yards at the maximum elevation of 41°. The sustained rate of fire was 10 rounds per minute per gun, and the specially treated barrel liners had a 780-round effective life.
The turrets were armored with an 8-inch face, 3.75- to 2-inch thick sides, 1.5-inch rear faces, and a 4-inch roof, while the 27-foot diameter barbettes had 6.3-inch armor surrounding the electric- powered reloading system with its four rotating ready-service projectile rings. The 8-inch guns were considered very reliable and effective weapons, although in October 1972 the center gun on Newport News’ B-turret burst and was removed, the turret then being fixed in place and rendered unusable.
The ship’s other protection consisted of a 10-foot-high belt of 6-inch thickness (tapering to 4 inches) that ran from forward of the bow 8-inch mount to abaft the stem mount and was enclosed by 5-inch-thick ends (for the first time in a U.S. Navy cruiser, too, there were four armor transverse bulkheads within the protected citadel). The main deck was composed of 1-inch-thick armor to detonate armor-piercing bombs, while the first platform had 3.5-inch armor. The unusual combined pilothouse/conning tower had 6.5-inch sides and a 4-inch roof, while the communications tube beneath it and leading to the gunnery plotting room had 4-inch armor.
For self-protection against air attack, the Des Moines class had been planned to carry a dozen quadruple Bofors and 20 twin 20-mm Oerlikon antiaircraft mounts, but with the advent of the kamikaze threat and the heavier-hitting semi-automatic 3-inch/50-caliber dual-purpose mount, the quadruple 40-mm mounts were replaced one-for-one by twin 3-inch mounts, and all but four of the 20-mm mounts were eliminated (and shortly after the ships were commissioned, removed entirely).
The Des Moines-class cruisers had a 4-shaft, 4-boiler steam propulsion plant that generated 120,000 shaft horsepower. On trials, the Salem reached 32.58 knots, although the ships had been designed for 33.5 knots. Some 2,675 tons of oil fuel were initially carried, giving the ships a range of 10,500 nautical miles at 15 knots. For electrical power, they had four 1,500-kW ship’s service turbogenerators and two 850-kW diesel sets.
Under the 1943 construction program, Des Moines was originally intended to be a unit of the smaller Worcester- class light cruiser design. She retained that hull number, 134, when her construction contract was switched from New York Shipbuilding in October 1943 to the larger facilities at Bethlehem Steel’s Quincy yard.
Costing some $48 million— considered very high at the time— the ship was laid down on 28 May 1945 launched on 27 September 1946 and commissioned on 16 November 1948. As World War II ended, the original class of a dozen was first cut to eight and then to the three closest to completion in the spring of 1946. The Dallas (CA-140) had been laid down in October 1945, but she was cancelled in June 1946 and scrapped on the ways.
Of the three completed, the Des Moines was the only one not to have air conditioning and was also the only one to carry—albeit briefly—an aircraft catapult. The Des Moines and the Salem never fired their guns in anger and rotated with the Newport News as Sixth Fleet flagship from 1949 through the end of the 1950s. Their formidable appearance and capabilities, and their accommodations for some 109 officers and 1,690 enlisted personnel, made them very useful as flagships, but their high operational cost shortened their careers. The Salem was decommissioned to reserve on 30 January 1959 and the Des Moines on 14 July 1961.
Although various plans were made to modernize them as guided-missile ships and/or fleet flagships, and there was even an effort made in 1982 to bring them back as gunfire support ships along with the four Iowa (BB-61) -class battleships, they never saw active service again. (The combined triple 8-inch mounts of the three ships of the class could launch a greater weight of fire per minute than all 92 5-inch guns on the U.S. Navy’s current 22 guided-missile cruisers and 48 guided-missile destroyers.)
In 1962, the Newport News was modified to serve as Second Fleet flagship with additional communications, command spaces, and accommodations at the expense of most of her secondary battery. She was transferred to the Pacific Fleet in 1967 and actually employed her 8-inch guns on shore bombardment duties while serving off Vietnam as Seventh Fleet flagship, but her days, too, were numbered, and she was decommissioned on 27 June 1975 after further service as Second Fleet flagship.