USS Guam (CB-2)

USS Guam (CB-2): Named for a Hard-Won Island

Commissioned on 17 September 1944, USS Guam was the second Alaska-class large cruiser, and her name carried particular weight in the autumn of 1944. The island of Guam, an American territory seized by Japan four days after Pearl Harbor, had just been retaken at tremendous cost: Marines and Army soldiers fought a brutal 21-day campaign in July and August 1944 to liberate the island, suffering over 7,000 casualties before the last organized Japanese resistance collapsed. Guam came home to the United States. Then the Navy named a warship for her.

Guam shared all of her sister Alaska's formidable characteristics: twelve 12-inch guns in four triple turrets, 33-knot speed, and the displacement of a true capital ship packaged in a hull fast enough to screen the carriers driving toward Japan. She entered the Pacific campaign in late 1944, joining Alaska and the fast carrier task forces conducting the final offensive operations that would end the war.

Two battle stars for Pacific service in 1944–1945, earned in the war's most consequential closing phase, including the Okinawa campaign and carrier strikes against Japan's home islands that preceded the atomic bombings and Japan's surrender. The Alaska class was never intended to replace battleships or fight fleet actions against Japanese capital ships; they were designed to protect the carriers that were actually winning the war. Guam performed that mission without flinching.

She was decommissioned on 17 February 1947, the same date as Alaska. Named for an island Americans died to retake, serving in the final campaign that forced Japan's surrender. Tactically Acquired's USS Guam (CB-2) collection honors the ship that carried the name of a liberated American territory back into the Pacific fight, and helped finish the job.