USS Harry E. Yarnell (CG-17)

USS Harry E. Yarnell (CG-17): Named for a Visionary Admiral

Commissioned on 2 February 1963, USS Harry E. Yarnell was the second Leahy-class guided missile cruiser, named for Admiral Harry Ervin Yarnell. In 1932, Yarnell commanded a carrier force during Fleet Problem XIII and conducted a simulated surprise attack on Pearl Harbor launched from carriers operating north of Oahu on a Sunday morning. The exercise umpires ruled it a devastating success. The Navy's senior leadership, committed to the battleship as the decisive weapon, largely dismissed the result. Nine years later Japan proved Yarnell right at a cost of 2,403 American lives.

Naming a missile cruiser for Yarnell was fitting on multiple levels. He was a man who understood that technological change demanded doctrinal adaptation, and the Leahy-class ships bearing his legacy were precisely that kind of leap: all missiles, no guns, built for a threat environment that the wartime Navy could not have fully envisioned. The lesson Yarnell taught in 1932 finally got the monument it deserved.

Harry E. Yarnell served through Cold War deployments that were the primary mission of the Leahy class: Mediterranean operations with Sixth Fleet, Western Pacific deployments with Seventh Fleet, carrier task force screening duties alongside the Essex and Forrestal-class carriers that defined American naval striking power through the 1960s and 1970s.

She was decommissioned on 2 February 1991, exactly 28 years to the day after commissioning. Tactically Acquired's USS Harry E. Yarnell (CG-17) collection honors the admiral whose insight predicted Pearl Harbor and the cruiser that carried his name through the Cold War that followed.