USS Toledo (CA-133)

USS Toledo (CA-133): Ohio's Cruiser in the Forgotten War

Commissioned on 27 October 1946, USS Toledo was a Baltimore-class heavy cruiser that earned five battle stars for Korean War service, one of the strongest naval combat records in the entire Korean conflict. Named for Ohio's Lake Erie port city at the mouth of the Maumee River, she proved that the heavy gun cruiser still had essential roles in the jet age of the 1950s.

Toledo deployed to Korean waters almost from the opening of the war in June 1950. Her 8-inch guns could reach inland targets that no other naval weapon could touch with equivalent precision and weight of fire, and Korean terrain, with its ridgelines and river valleys, made those guns uniquely valuable to UN ground commanders who needed fire support that aircraft couldn't always provide through the brutal peninsula weather.

She was present for the Inchon landing in September 1950, MacArthur's audacious amphibious envelopment that turned the entire strategic situation around in a single operation. Naval gunfire from ships like Toledo prepared the landing beaches and suppressed shore defenses as Marines stormed a tidal channel that military planners had deemed nearly impossible for an amphibious assault. Inchon is studied in every professional military education program in the world. Toledo was part of it.

Through the subsequent Chinese intervention and the positional warfare of 1951–1953, Toledo maintained continuous operations in Korean waters. Five battle stars across the conflict's full arc. She was decommissioned on 21 May 1960. Tactically Acquired's USS Toledo (CA-133) collection honors Ohio's cruiser and the crew who earned five battle stars in America's Forgotten War.