USS Phoenix (CL-46)

USS Phoenix (CL-46): The Ship That Wouldn't Die (Twice)

Commissioned on 3 October 1938, USS Phoenix was a Brooklyn-class light cruiser with one of the most extraordinary histories of any American warship, she survived Pearl Harbor, fought through the entire Pacific War earning eleven battle stars, and then died forty years later in a different ocean under a different flag. Her story spans four decades and two wars.

Phoenix was in Pearl Harbor on 7 December 1941 when Japanese aircraft struck. She was moored at the Navy Yard, not at Battleship Row, and survived the attack without serious damage. She got underway during the attack, her crew manning battle stations as bombs and torpedoes tore apart the battleships. She escaped the harbor and spent the next hours on patrol, one of the few large combatants immediately available after the devastating Japanese strike.

Through 1942 and 1943, Phoenix fought in the Pacific across multiple campaigns, from the Southwest Pacific under General MacArthur's command to the broader Central Pacific operations. She was at the Leyte Gulf campaign, arguably the most pivotal naval battle of the entire war, contributing to the destruction of the Imperial Japanese Navy's operational capacity. Her eleven battle stars represent sustained combat from Pearl Harbor to the final months of the war.

After World War II, Phoenix was sold to Argentina in 1951, where she was renamed ARA General Belgrano and served as a flagship of the Argentine Navy for three decades. On 2 May 1982, during the Falklands War, the British nuclear submarine HMS Conqueror torpedoed and sank the Belgrano, killing 323 Argentine sailors. It was the only ship sunk by a nuclear submarine in combat in history, and the act remains one of the most controversial of the Falklands conflict.

Phoenix survived Pearl Harbor. She survived eleven battles in the Pacific. She couldn't survive HMS Conqueror. But her legacy lives in two navies and two wars, and in the men who served aboard her under two flags. Tactically Acquired's USS Phoenix (CL-46) collection honors her American service and the sailors who fought the Pacific War aboard her.