USS Springfield (CL-66)

USS Springfield (CL-66): From WWII to the Missile Age

Commissioned on 9 September 1944, USS Springfield was a Cleveland-class light cruiser that earned two battle stars in the final year of World War II before transitioning into an entirely different naval era as one of the converted guided missile cruisers that bridged American naval power from the gun cruiser age into the missile age. Her career spans two distinct chapters of American naval history.

Springfield arrived in the Pacific too late for the major carrier battles that defined 1942-1944, but she was there for the final drive against Japan. She participated in operations supporting the Okinawa campaign and in the carrier strikes against the Japanese home islands that preceded Japan's August 1945 surrender. Two battle stars for service in one of the war's most intense closing phases, where kamikaze attacks were at their peak and American naval forces were conducting operations that brought the war to Japanese soil.

After the war, Springfield was decommissioned and placed in reserve, one of dozens of cruisers that the postwar Navy could not afford to maintain in active service. But the Cold War created new strategic requirements, and in the late 1950s the Navy began converting selected gun cruisers to guided missile platforms as the technology emerged. Springfield was selected for conversion, recommissioned as CLG-7 in 1960, armed with Talos and Tartar surface-to-air missiles.

As CLG-7, Springfield served as Sixth Fleet flagship in the Mediterranean during the Cold War, a significant role that kept her in continuous service as an instrument of American naval diplomacy and deterrence during some of the tensest years of the Cold War. She was decommissioned as CG-7 in 1980, having served in two very different wars across two very different eras of naval technology.

Tactically Acquired's USS Springfield (CL-66) collection honors a ship that fought in both the gun-cruiser age and the missile age, a true transitional vessel in the history of American naval power.