USS St. Louis, eighth of nine light cruisers, was the fifth ship of the United States Navy named after the city of St. Louis, Missouri. Commissioned in 1939, she was very active in the Pacific during World War II, earning eleven battle stars.
She was deactivated shortly after the war, but was recommissioned into the Brazilian Navy as Almirante Tamandaré in 1951. She served until 1976, and sank under tow to the scrappers in 1980.
Design
As the major naval powers negotiated the London Naval Treaty in 1930, which contained a provision limiting the construction of heavy cruisers armed with guns, United States naval designers came to the conclusion that with a displacement limited to , a better protected vessel could be built with an armament of guns. The designers also theorized that the much higher rate of fire of the smaller guns would allow a ship armed with twelve of the guns to overpower one armed with eight 8-inch guns. During the design process of the , which began immediately after the treaty was signed, the US Navy became aware that the next class of Japanese cruisers, the , would be armed with a main battery of fifteen 6-inch guns, prompting them to adopt the same number of guns for the Brooklyns. After building seven ships to the original design, additional changes were incorporated, particularly to the propulsion machinery and the secondary battery, resulting in what is sometimes referred to the St. Louis sub-class, which also included .
St. Louis was long overall and had a beam of and a draft of . Her standard displacement amounted to and increased to at full load. The ship was powered by four Parsons steam turbines, each driving one propeller shaft, using steam provided by eight oil-fired Babcock & Wilcox boilers. Unlike the Brooklyns, the two St. Louis-class cruisers arranged their machinery in the unit system, alternating boiler and engine rooms. Rated at , the turbines were intended to give a top speed of . The ship had a cruising range of at a speed of . She carried four Curtiss SOC Seagull floatplanes for aerial reconnaissance, which were launched by a pair of aircraft catapults on her fantail. Her crew numbered 52 officers and 836 enlisted men.
The ship was armed with a main battery of fifteen 6 in /47 caliber Mark 16 guns in five 3-gun turrets on the centerline. Three were placed forward, two of which were placed in a superfiring pair facing forward, with the third being directly pointed aft; the other two turrets were placed aft of the superstructure in another superfiring pair. The secondary battery consisted of eight /38 caliber dual purpose guns mounted in twin turrets, with one turret on either side of the conning tower and the other pair on either side of the aft superstructure. As designed, the ship was equipped with an anti-aircraft (AA) battery of eight guns, but her anti-aircraft battery was revised during her career. The ship's belt armor consisted of 5 inches on a layer of of special treatment steel and her deck armor was thick. The main battery turrets were protected with faces and they were supported by barbettes 6 inches thick. St. Louiss conning tower had 5-inch sides.
Service history The keel for St. Louis was laid down on 10 December 1936 at the Newport News Shipbuilding and Drydock Company in Newport News, Virginia. She was launched on 15 April 1938, and after completing fitting out work, was commissioned into active service on 19 May 1939, with the hull number CL-49. The ship was initially based in Norfolk, Virginia, for sea trials; her shakedown cruise concluded on 6 October, by which time World War II had broken out in Europe. She thereafter joined the Atlantic Fleet's Neutrality Patrols. During this period, on 3 September 1940, she embarked a group of officers to survey a number of locations in North and South America that the United States might obtain through the "destroyers for bases" deal with the United Kingdom. This voyage went as far north as Newfoundland in Canada and as far south as British Guiana, and ended on 27 October with her return to Norfolk.
On 9 November, St. Louis departed to join the Pacific Fleet. After passing through the Panama Canal on 14 November, she arrived in Pearl Harbor, Hawaii, on 12 December. She thereafter took part in the routine training exercises with the rest of the fleet through the winter of 1940–1941, followed by a trip to Mare Island Naval Shipyard in California for an overhaul. She arrived back in Pearl Harbor on 20 June and returned to operations with the fleet. In August, St. Louis and several other cruisers embarked on a voyage to the western Pacific; they conducted patrols between Wake Island, Midway Island, and Guam, before sailing for Manila in the Philippines. They arrived back in Pearl Harbor in late September. St. Louis was dry docked at the Pearl Harbor Naval Shipyard on 28 September for routine maintenance. By 7 December, she had returned to her usual mooring in the Southeast Loch.
World War II At 07:56 on 7 December, men aboard St. Louis reported seeing Japanese aircraft overhead, beginning their attack on Pearl Harbor. Shortly thereafter, the order to general quarters was given, and the ship's anti-aircraft guns began to engage the attacking aircraft. The engine room crew had begun preparations to get the ship underway by 08:06. Fourteen minutes later, the anti-aircraft gunners had shot down a Japanese aircraft, and by 09:00, had downed another pair. The ship slipped from her mooring at 09:31 and steamed toward the South Channel. Her 6-inch guns were quickly restored to operation as the crew prepared for the possibility of a surface action.
A Japanese midget submarine that was in the channel entrance attempted to torpedo St. Louis, but the torpedoes struck a shoal some from the ship and exploded harmlessly. Destroyers arrived and dropped depth charges on the submarine, allowing St. Louis to proceed to open waters without further interruption. The ship took part in the unsuccessful search for the Japanese carrier strike force, but by 10 December, she had returned to Pearl Harbor. St. Louis thereafter escorted transport ships that evacuated casualties to California and brought reinforcements to Hawaii.
1942
St. Louis thereafter joined Task Force 17 (TF 17), which was centered on the aircraft carrier . The unit left San Francisco on 6 January 1942 as an escort for troop ships carrying a Marine expeditionary force to American Samoa to strengthen the garrison there. The troops were disembarked at Pago Pago between 20 and 24 January, and TF 17 then moved to launch a series of air strikes in concert with Task Force 8 on the Japanese-held Marshall and Gilbert island groups. In response, the Japanese sent several submarines and elements of the 1st Air Fleet to launch a counter-attack, but they recalled both groups before making contact with either American task force. The ships thereafter returned to Pearl Harbor on 7 February.
St. Louis was then detached from TF 17 to resume escorting convoys between Hawaii and California, along with one to the New Hebrides. She next joined the escort for the ocean liner , which was carrying Manuel L. Quezon, the President of the Philippines, to the United States. The ships arrived in San Francisco on 8 May, and the next day, St. Louis got underway to return to Pearl Harbor. There, she joined a group of ships carrying reinforcements to Midway during the preparations for the Battle of Midway. St. Louis was used to carry two companies of the 2nd Marine Raider Battalion and a battery of guns. The ships offloaded aircraft and marines on 25 May, and St. Louis was then transferred to Task Force 8, which was sailing north to bring reinforcements to the Aleutian Islands. At that time, the unit also included her sister ships and , the heavy cruisers and , and fourteen destroyers, commanded by Rear Admiral (RADM) Robert Alfred Theobald.
TF 8 arrived in Kodiak Island on 31 May, where St. Louis refueled in preparation for patrol duty to the south of the Alaskan Peninsula. She conducted these operations through July, and on 3 August, she got underway to bombard Japanese positions on Kiska in the Aleutians. After shelling the island on 7 August, she returned to Kodiak four days later and then resumed patrols in the area. She took part in the occupation of Adak Island. St. Louis left the Aleutians on 25 October by way of Dutch Harbor for another overhaul at Mare Island, which was completed by early December.
1943–1944: Solomons Islands campaign
St. Louis left San Francisco on 4 December as part of the escort for a convoy of transport ships en route to New Caledonia. The ships arrived on 21 December, where St. Louis separated from the convoy to join Allied forces waging the Solomon Islands campaign. She moved first to Espiritu Santo in the New Hebrides, and from there, embarked on her first offensive operations in January 1943, conducting bombardments of Japanese positions at Munda and Kolombangara, particularly targeting the airfields there. Over the next five months, she participated in numerous patrols in "the Slot" and raids against Japanese positions in the area. The former were intended to block Japanese reinforcement missions—the so-called "Tokyo Express". During this period, the ship suffered a number of accidents, including jammed guns and the loss of one of her anchors, which tore a hole in the bow as it fell.
The first of these raids took place from 1 to 4 January, when St. Louis covered a group of seven transports carrying elements of the 25th Infantry Division to Guadalcanal. The unit at that time included six other cruisers and five destroyers, and was commanded by RADM Walden L. Ainsworth. Ainsworth left four cruisers and three destroyers to cover the convoy on the 4th, taking St. Louis, Helena, and Nashville, and two destroyers to bombard Munda in the early hours of 5 January. The ships fired a total of some 4,000 shells, but inflicted little significant damage to the Japanese airfield. The ships returned to Guadalcanal at 09:00 and began recovering their reconnaissance floatplanes when a Japanese airstrike arrived and damaged two of the other cruisers. St. Louis and the rest of the unit carried out a bombardment of Vila on the night of 23–24 January; St. Louis formed part of the covering force and did not take an active role in the attack. St. Louis and the rest of the unit were to conduct another attack on Munda on the night of 7–8 April, but a major Japanese air raid earlier on the 7th disrupted Allied plans and forced Ainsworth's task force to flee south.
St. Louis and the rest of TF 68 conducted a sweep into Vella Gulf on the night of 6–7 May to distract Japanese attention from a group of fast minelayers that laid a minefield off New Georgia to block re-supply efforts. The ships encountered no Japanese opposition that night, but late on 7 May, four destroyers stumbled into the minefield. Three destroyers struck mines, one of which sank immediately, and the other two were sunk by American aircraft the following morning. On 12 May, TF 68 made another raid on Japanese positions in the area; St. Louis and the destroyers and were detached from the main force to bombard Munda while the rest of the ships attacked Vila.
Landing at Rice Anchorage