Quincy (CA 71) - Naval Cruise Book

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HI TORY OF THE U.S.S. Q CY QC lj WHEN a new United States Ship Quincy was commissioned on 15 December 1943 in the yards of the Bethlehem Steel Company at Fore River, Massachussetts, its name rang with the tragedy of Savo Island. There five United States cruisers - the last Quincy among them - had been blasted to the bottom by Japanese guns in a surprise night attack. The new ship's first Captain, E. M. Senn, prophesied in his commissioning address that his Quincy would return the war to the very shores of the enemy. And his words were soon to prove true. On 2 February 1944 her bow first cut the waters of Boston Harbor, on the way to five weeks of exhaustive shakedown training. But war was on. Her initial training completed, the Quincy at once set sail to take part in the greatest naval maneuver yet planned or dreamed of. She stopped in Bangor, Ireland, where General Eisenhower inspected the ship and spoke to her crew. Preparations were even then being made amid a hush of ofiicial secrecy for the mighty Normandy invasiong on 6 June 1944 the quiet French coast exploded in fire and blood. In 36 hours the Quincy had emptied her 4-'3f.Tfv'1f1?:S:I11!f'ft1: m '' :t':'::vm-rr? :L Ai .:r. magazines. She raced back to England, rearmed, and within 30 hours of the time her last shell was fired she again was raining death on the defending Germans. For fifteen days the Quincy stuck at her task, firing by day and watching by 'night until the last target had been captured or destroyed. Army spotters signalled their congratulations to the Quincy on highly accurate pinpoint firing... even against small concentrations of tanks, troops, and trucks inland . . The historic bombardment completed, there was time only to provision and rearm before she was called to her next mission. The mighty naval fortress of Cherbourg threatened advancing Allied armies. The Quincy, along with a small force of British and American ships, steamed on the morning of 25 June under the very muzzles of the massed German shore- based batteries. For seven hours she blasted at harbor defenses, and for seven hours enemy shells came hurtling back. But finally the last gun was silenced. Victorious troops had only to sweep up the remains, of what a day before had seemed an impregnable citadel. That evening Cherbourg was ours. ' This time the crew had two weeks to prepare before sailing off to the Mediterranean. An opening assault on the southern coast of France was being planned. Gun crews drilled, and the ship was keyed to readinessg on 15 August the attack began. For twelve days the battle-hardened Quincy dodged vicious counter-battery fire to rain explosives on every target the Army designated, staying until the last resistance crumbled and the battle was carried beyond the range of her guns. Then, another battle won, she returned to Boston. Her berth was soon shifted to Newport News, where on 23 .January 1945 a new chapter in the 1: -,, qi , history of the world began. Under cover of an elaborate military guard and shrouded in official ,' secrecy, President Roosevelt, Justice Byrnes, Fleet Admiral Leahy, and a star-studded presidential retinue were brought en board Their nnrevealed destination: Yalta, then an unknown middle- eastern dustbowl but soon to he a diplomatic hyword. The ship at once slipped her moorings and headed cautiously out to sea. Three destroyers and a tireless air escort kept constant guard as she sped across the Atlantic. Her first stop - after celebrating the President's 63rd birthday on board - was Malta, where Prime Minister Churchill awaited the Quincy's arrival and exchanged salutes as she entered. It was a day of official calls. The list of visitors was impressive: U. S. Secretary of State Stettiniusg Britain s Anthony Edenq Harry Hopkinsg Govemor General of Maltag Admiral of the Fleet Cunningham: General of the Army George C. Marshallg Fleet Admiral Ernest J. Kingg Admiral Harold Stark: Vice Admiral Henry K. Hewittg Prime Minister Winston Churchillg Sarah U. S. Ambassador to Russiag General Sir Henry Maitland Wilsong General Sir Hastings lsmayg Major Gcneral Jacobsgg Air Chief Marshall Alan Brooke. But the President had other work to do. He went on to Yalta by plane, and held his fateful meetings with Churchill and Stalin. The Lake, in the Suez Canal, to await his return. ........c-... nn., ,se ,,-::5s2.L.fL.s...- - ,.:.,..:,:t...:.., ,, uvmta since smr 9 fj QUINCY I.. menu var one qu-an v v-r was u-into sums -an - ..- ta s-. vvces-:rn var, an-for - 'V -, -. f u L. v- raw svn 1 .tv tl ' ,- n . .. As: ..- fr .v,...:-a-.n ff f . .lst-. .f, : f ,JU tr-un ......... -'-if . ' -f-' , .,.- .... .-sta... 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The first part of the Pacific cruise was spent in warding off the attacks of marauding planes, and in battling through the same typhoon that cost her sister ship Pittsburg her how. lu her first change of command ceremony, Captain J. A. Waters, U.S.N., relieved Captain Senn. But the Japanese homeland was soon, for the first time in history, to be bombarded from the sea, and when the chosen units of the force were gathered together the Ouinc answered Present The steel city of Kamaishi, 240 miles from Tokyo, was chosen as a target Bombardment Unit 34.8.1 moved up to the y . . enemy shore on 14 July, 1945. The mighty roar of guns thundered across a still Oriental moming, and with its opening shot the Quincy - who had fired the first salvo at the Normandy beach -- became also the first ship to have shelled both Fortress Europe and Fortress Japan. 'Within four hours the city was in flames. On 29 July Hamamatsu fell under punishment of the Quincy's guns, and later the remains of Kamaishi again were blasted. On 15 August Japan surrendered. And on 27 August the Quincy, steaming with the first units of the American fleet, moved into Tokyo Bay. For three months the Quincy was a part of the Japanese occupation force. On 26 November 1945 she started back across the Pacific. Decommis- sioning was begun in San Franciscog and on 15 August 1946, a pround tired ship was officially placed out of commission at the Puget Sound Naval Shipyard in Bremerton, Washington. It had been written: Somewhere in the states the Quincy will find a quiet berth to await recall to active duty. , The berth was found. Five years later, the call would come.

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INTRODUCTIONs Well? ' 4 The cruise is over. We came, we saw, we went. Any book pretending to record a ship's cruise must fail. The measure of its failure is the extent to which it loses the theme of that cruise. And yet who is there to whom that theme has not, in some way, a different meaning from what it has to the closest of his shipmates? Who is there who has not been left with some -special memory, some sense or feeling, or some discovery, that is his and his alone? These immediately personal impressions will be the pages between the pages.'E'ach of us has seen, and, seeing, has learned and remembered. The phonograph catches only the sound of things, and the camera sees but the form and the color, neither feels the gentle brush of an Adriatic breeze or absorbs the warmt of the Mediterranean sung nor can it sense the crashing cacophony of the Apennines towering over olive-studded slopes, or know the human beat of discovery as new cities unfold, and new lives are revealed. The spirit and the 'sense and the spark of life - this, that no science can record, is the meat and the substance of human recollection. It cannot be found in books and pictures. Nor can it be put there. It has to be known and seen and felt. We, who have known and seen and felt all this, may occasionally stretch out on the Quincy's wooden deck, with a battle-gray turret massed above and the ocean slipping silently by for mile after uncounted mile -- this on one of those meteorological holidays when the infinite sea seems lost in sleep, and the mind turns itself to idle imaginings - and ponder whimsically on what our lives would have been like if we had never been there. What would have filled those spots in our memory that now ring with the clatter of Glasgow traffic, or echo the refrain ofa Neapolitan song? But, ponder as we will, we ponder in vain. Our past is with us. Indubitably and irrevocably, we were there. N