USS Minneapolis (CA-36)

USS Minneapolis (CA-36): Rebuilt from the Pacific

Commissioned on 19 May 1934, USS Minneapolis was a New Orleans-class heavy cruiser that earned seventeen battle stars, one of the highest totals in the entire U.S. Navy, through four years of relentless Pacific combat. But her most remarkable story is not how many battles she fought. It's how she fought them after losing her bow to a Japanese torpedo in one of the worst American naval defeats of the war.

Minneapolis was in Pearl Harbor on 7 December 1941 but escaped the Japanese attack. She entered the war immediately and fought through the first year of the Pacific campaign: the Coral Sea, Midway, the Eastern Solomons, and the brutal naval fighting around Guadalcanal. By late November 1942, she had already established herself as one of the most seasoned cruisers in the Pacific.

The night of 30 November 1942, the Battle of Tassafaronga, changed everything. A Japanese Long Lance torpedo struck Minneapolis forward, detonating with tremendous force. The explosion blew off approximately 60 feet of her bow, leaving her forecastle deck slanting down into the sea. A second torpedo hit almost immediately, flooding more compartments and threatening to pull the ship under. Her crew scrambled to control flooding, fighting through smoke and darkness while the night battle raged around them.

Minneapolis made it to Tulagi under her own power, a feat of seamanship and damage control that bordered on miraculous. There, in one of the war's most creative improvisations, Navy Seabees and shipwrights built a temporary bow from native coconut palm timber, creating a working structure that allowed Minneapolis to make the 7,000-mile transit to Puget Sound for permanent repairs without foundering. She was back in the Pacific by August 1943.

From that point, she never stopped. She fought at the Marshalls, the Marianas, Leyte Gulf, Iwo Jima, and Okinawa, adding battle star after battle star to her record until Japan surrendered. Seventeen battle stars total, representing virtually the entire Pacific War. Minneapolis was decommissioned on 10 February 1947.

The crew of Minneapolis proved that American damage control, ingenuity, and refusal to quit could recover from anything the Japanese could throw. That's the ethos of this ship and every man who served aboard her.

Tactically Acquired's USS Minneapolis (CA-36) collection honors that remarkable resilience. Wear it for the men who built a bow out of coconut logs and brought their ship back to the fight.