USS Gettysburg (CG-64)

USS Gettysburg (CG-64): The Turning Point

Commissioned on 22 January 1994, USS Gettysburg was named for the Battle of Gettysburg, fought from 1 to 3 July 1863 , the engagement that turned the tide of the Civil War in the Eastern Theater and ended Lee's second invasion of the North. In three days of fighting across Seminary Ridge, Little Round Top, Devil's Den, Culp's Hill, and Cemetery Ridge, more than 50,000 soldiers became casualties. On the third day, 12,500 Confederate soldiers walked across three-quarters of a mile of open ground toward the Union center in Pickett's Charge. Fewer than half came back. Lee's Army of Northern Virginia retreated across the Potomac and never invaded the North again.

The name Gettysburg on a warship's bow is not taken lightly. It represents the costliest single battle in American history and the moment the momentum of the war shifted irrevocably.

USS Gettysburg served in the Atlantic Fleet, deploying regularly to the Mediterranean and the Persian Gulf as part of carrier strike groups. She was equipped with ballistic missile defense capability through Aegis upgrades, giving her the ability to engage ballistic missiles in flight , a mission that placed her among the most capable surface combatants in the Navy for the threat environments of the 2000s and 2010s, particularly in regions where ballistic missile proliferation was growing rapidly.

Tactically Acquired's USS Gettysburg (CG-64) collection honors the crew who served aboard her and the three days on Pennsylvania farmland whose outcome shaped the country that built her.