USS Tucson (CL-98)

USS Tucson (CL-98): Arizona's Ship for the Final Push

Commissioned on 3 February 1945, USS Tucson was an Atlanta-class anti-aircraft cruiser that arrived in the Pacific campaign in the final months of the war, but arrived to one of the most intense operational environments of the entire conflict. Named for Arizona's desert city, she earned one battle star for operations that included anti-aircraft defense against the kamikaze campaign and participation in the final naval operations against Japan.

Tucson was commissioned at a moment when the Pacific War's outcome was no longer in doubt but the cost of victory was still very much undetermined. American naval forces were conducting carrier strikes against the Japanese home islands, and Japanese kamikazes were responding with organized mass attacks that were sinking and damaging dozens of American ships. An Atlanta-class cruiser's primary value in this environment was her anti-aircraft battery, and that battery was always needed.

She was present for operations in the western Pacific through the summer of 1945 as the bombing campaign against Japan intensified. The dropping of atomic bombs on Hiroshima and Nagasaki in August 1945 and Japan's surrender ended the need for the planned invasion of the home islands, an invasion in which Tucson would have participated and which naval planners estimated could have cost a million casualties.

One battle star for a short but significant contribution to the war's final phase. Tucson was decommissioned on 21 February 1949, having served through the war's most consequential final months. Tactically Acquired's USS Tucson (CL-98) collection honors Arizona's contribution to the Pacific campaign and the crew who served through the war's closing operations.