USS Gridley (CG-21)

USS Gridley (CG-21): You May Fire When Ready

Commissioned on 25 May 1963, USS Gridley was a Leahy-class guided missile cruiser named for Captain Charles V. Gridley, who commanded USS Olympia at the Battle of Manila Bay on 1 May 1898. Gridley received Commodore George Dewey's order that morning: "You may fire when you are ready, Gridley." Within hours the Spanish Asiatic Squadron was destroyed and the United States had its first major naval victory of the modern era. Gridley died of illness that same year, worn down by the campaign. The Navy remembered him.

CG-21 Gridley earned six Vietnam battle stars and one Gulf War battle star across a Cold War career spanning three decades. Her Vietnam deployments followed the Leahy-class pattern of Gulf of Tonkin operations as part of the carrier task forces conducting operations against North Vietnam. Through years of rotating deployments from the escalation of the mid-1960s through the final American naval operations of 1972 and 1973, Gridley's crews maintained the carrier escort mission without break.

Beyond Vietnam, Gridley served in the Cold War pattern of fleet deployments and exercises that maintained American naval readiness against Soviet naval expansion. The Soviets were building Kynda-class and Kresta-class missile cruisers of their own, and the Leahy class provided the counter to them in the carrier battle group defense role through the entire competition.

Gridley was decommissioned on 1 September 1993. Seven battle stars, three decades of service, a name from the Navy's 1898 origin story carried into the Cold War. Tactically Acquired's USS Gridley (CG-21) collection honors the crew who kept the watch through the long years of Cold War naval deterrence and Vietnam combat deployments.