USS Bainbridge (CGN-25)

USS Bainbridge (CGN-25): Around the World on Nuclear Power

Commissioned on 6 October 1962, USS Bainbridge was the U.S. Navy's second nuclear-powered surface warship and the only ship of her class. Built on a destroyer leader hull rather than the true cruiser hull of Long Beach, she was smaller and faster than her nuclear predecessor, the nuclear answer to the Leahy-class conventional missile cruisers. Armed with Terrier missiles fore and aft and capable of operating with nuclear-powered carriers on extended deployments without refueling, she was exactly the kind of ship Admiral Hyman Rickover had been pushing the Navy to build since Nautilus proved the concept in 1954.

Named for Commodore William Bainbridge, who commanded USS Constitution in her 1812 defeat of HMS Java, she carried a name from the Navy's origins into the nuclear age. The distance between Bainbridge's wooden frigate armed with 24-pound cannon and CGN-25 armed with nuclear reactors and surface-to-air missiles captures the full arc of American naval development across two centuries.

In 1964, Bainbridge participated in Operation Sea Orbit alongside USS Enterprise (CVAN-65) and USS Long Beach (CGN-9), the first all-nuclear-powered task force to circumnavigate the globe. The 30,565-mile voyage was completed in 65 days without refueling any ship and with only routine maintenance stops. It was one of the most significant demonstrations of naval capability in American history, proving that nuclear-powered task forces could sustain operations anywhere in the world without the logistical constraints that had shaped naval strategy since the age of coal.

Eight Vietnam battle stars for sustained service in the Gulf of Tonkin. One Gulf War battle star for service nearly three decades later. Bainbridge was decommissioned on 9 September 1996 after 34 years of nuclear service. Tactically Acquired's USS Bainbridge (CGN-25) collection honors the nuclear cruiser that sailed around the world in 65 days and the crew that proved what nuclear naval power could do when given the open ocean.