USS Nashville (CL-43)

USS Nashville (CL-43): From Tokyo to Leyte

Commissioned on 6 June 1938, USS Nashville was a Brooklyn-class light cruiser that fought the Pacific War from some of its opening moments to some of its bloodiest. Named for Tennessee's capital, she earned ten battle stars across four years of Pacific operations, and she carried a piece of history on one of the war's most dramatic missions.

On 18 April 1942, Nashville was part of the task force that launched Lieutenant Colonel Jimmy Doolittle's B-25 Mitchell bombers from USS Hornet, 650 miles off the Japanese coast. Sixteen B-25s roared off Hornet's deck and flew to Japan, the first American air strike on the Japanese home islands. Nashville's role was to screen the task force and engage any Japanese vessels encountered. When a Japanese picket boat spotted the task force and sent a radio alert, Nashville sank it before it could be confirmed, but the attack launched early anyway. Nashville was present at one of the most audacious operations in American military history.

Through 1942 and 1943, Nashville fought in the Aleutian Islands campaign, one of the most brutal and least publicized theaters of the Pacific War, where fog, freezing temperatures, and rough seas were as dangerous as the enemy. She participated in operations at Attu and Kiska as American forces worked to drive the Japanese off American soil in Alaska.

Nashville was badly damaged by a kamikaze strike at Leyte Gulf in December 1944, the hit killed 133 men and wounded 190, one of the single most costly kamikaze strikes of the war. General Douglas MacArthur, who was scheduled to be aboard for the Mindoro landings, had transferred off the ship the previous day. Nashville was repaired and returned, but her Leyte wounds cost her the final months of the Pacific War.

Ten battle stars spanning the Doolittle Raid to Leyte Gulf. The crew of Nashville fought the full length of the Pacific War with distinction. After the war she was sold to Chile, serving as the Capitan Prat. Tactically Acquired's USS Nashville (CL-43) collection honors that service and every man who stood their watch aboard her.