History, Politics And Current Affairs

Big D: DALLAS (CA-140)

The DES MOINES-class heavy cruiser DALLAS (CA-140) was the last gun cruiser laid down by the US Navy. The Navy had originally planned to build at least twelve of these big cruisers armed with automatic 8in guns, to have been numbered CA134, 139-143, and 148-153. However, the end of the war changed all that: CA150-153 were cancelled in March 1945 without ever being started, while CA142-143 and 149 were cancelled in August 1945, at which time some material had already been gathered. CA141 followed in January 1946. That left just one division of four - CA134, 139-140, and 148. Three would survive; postwar budget cuts finally claimed the fourth - DALLAS - in June 1946.

But what if the Navy had scraped up the money to complete the fourth ship? What if there had been a full division of automatic 8in cruisers? What arc might this lone star have followed?


From the Dictionary of American Naval Fighting Ships That Never Were

DALLAS
CA-140
Displacement: 17,000 tons
Length: 717 feet
Beam: 77 feet
Draft: 26 feet
Speed: 33 knots
Complement: 1,738
Armament: nine 8in/55, twelve 5in/38, twenty 3in/50, eight 20mm
Class: DES MOINES

DALLAS (CA-140) was laid down on 15 October 1945 by the Bethlehem Steel Co., Quincy, Mass.; launched on 28 June 1947; sponsored by Mrs. J.R. Temple, wife of the mayor of Dallas; and commissioned on 27 October 1949, Captain W.R. Early in command.

The last all-gun cruiser completed for the US Navy, DALLAS conducted her shakedown cruise in the Caribbean from January to March 1950. After completing post-shakedown repairs at the Boston Navy Yard, on 20 May 1950 DALLAS departed Boston for her new home port of Long Beach, Calif.

Sailing via Guantanamo Bay, Cuba and the Panama Canal, DALLAS reached Long Beach on 10 June. She was still there two weeks later when she received word of the North Korean invasion of South Korea. In company with aircraft carrier PHILIPPINE SEA (CV-47), DALLAS departed Long Beach on 5 July for Hawaiian waters. After three weeks of training operations, the task group crossed the Pacific at high speed, joining Task Force 77 in Korean waters and entering combat on 5 August.

As part of Task Force 77, DALLAS spent the next month screening United Nations carrier forces as they stormed up and down both coasts of Korea, striking Communist targets everywhere they went. Detached from this duty in early September, DALLAS called briefly at Sasebo, Japan before returning to Korean waters.

DALLAS fired her guns in anger for the first time on 13 September, during the preparations for the Inchon landings. Five destroyers - DEHAVEN (DD-727), MANSFIELD (DD-728), LYMAN K. SWENSON (DD-729), COLLETT (DD-730), and GURKE (DD-783) - led DALLAS and four other cruisers - American heavy cruisers ROCHESTER (CA-124) and TOLEDO (CA-133) and Royal Navy light cruisers HMS JAMAICA and HMS KENYA - through the mine-infested channel toward the strategic island of Wolmi-Do in the middle of Inchon harbor. As the destroyers moved in close to Wolmi-Do, the five UN cruisers stood off waiting for the North Korean batteries to reveal their positions by firing on the destroyers. When the Communists did, the destroyers suffered heavily, but the cruisers responded with a telling weight of fire that silenced many guns and inflicted heavy casualties on the Communists. DALLAS’ semi-automatic 8-inch guns, of a new and different type than those mounted on previous heavy cruisers, made a particularly great impression on all present by their ability to fire ten rounds per minute - more than three times as fast as the 8-inch guns of the older cruisers, faster even than the 6-inch guns of the British cruisers.

After retiring during the evening of 13 September, DALLAS and her compatriots returned to complete the reduction of Wolmi-Do on the 14th. That job done, on the 15th DALLAS turned her attention to other Communist positions in and around Inchon as the Marines went ashore. She spent the next several days providing fire support until the Marine advance carried them beyond the range of her guns, after which she operated briefly with the fast carriers of Task Force 77 before returning to Sasebo for several days of upkeep.

DALLAS’ guns next went into action on 13 October during the first of several shore bombardments she would conduct in preparation for the landings at Wonsan, which were carried out on the 26th. For the next several weeks she frequently operated with ROCHESTER in support of minesweeping operations that opened the ports of eastern Korea, serving as a mobile helicopter base, firing on the occasional North Korean shore battery, and destroying a number of floating mines. As UN forces advanced rapidly up the Korean peninsula toward the Yalu River, it seemed as though the war was almost over.

However, the war took a new turn on 25 November 1950 when Communist China intervened, sending hundreds of thousands of troops into action against UN forces. As the UN offensive stalled, then turned into a bitter fighting retreat, it became clear that the war was far from over. On 15 December, as the first of several American and Korean divisions were evacuated via the port of Hungnam, DALLAS returned to action with intense naval gunfire strikes that continued for the next ten days, often in company with such ships as ROCHESTER, ST. PAUL (CA-73), and battleship MISSOURI (BB-63). After the evacuation was completed, DALLAS retired to Sasebo. She had been at sea continuously for 76 days.

Sailing again on 15 January 1951, DALLAS spent the next three months operating off the east coast of Korea. Much of this time was spent screening the fast carriers, but she was also frequently called upon for shore bombardment missions as UN forces advanced back to the 38th Parallel. Besides providing close support for UN troops, DALLAS also fired on strategic targets in North Korea, particularly rail and communications centers, many of which were located within range of her guns. Periodic visits to Sasebo gave her weary crew time to rest, and after one of these visits, on 25 April DALLAS departed for the United States.

Stopping briefly at Pearl Harbor, DALLAS reached Long Beach on 9 May, concluding a ten-month deployment during which she had steamed more than 40,000 miles and fired more than 4,000 rounds of 8-inch and 3,000 rounds of 5-inch ammunition. After a week at Long Beach, she sailed to the Hunter’s Point Naval Shipyard at San Francisco for overhaul.

Emerging from the shipyard in August 1951, DALLAS conducted refresher training off the California coast before departing for the Western Pacific on 10 September. Arriving off the coast of Korea on 28 September, DALLAS spent the month of October engaged in bombardment missions, hitting strategic targets at places such as Wonsan, Hungnam, Songjin, and Chongjin. After a visit to Sasebo, DALLAS spent most of November screening the fast carriers, then returned to the “bombline” in December. She spent Christmas 1951 at sea but celebrated New Year’s 1952 at Sasebo, after which she resumed shore bombardment duty off the Korean coast, a task which, interspersed with visits to Sasebo, kept her occupied until 27 March 1952, when she departed for home.

Arriving at Long Beach on 11 April, DALLAS spent the next two months in overhaul at Hunter’s Point. She then spent the remainder of 1952 engaged in routine operations off the West Coast, carrying midshipmen to Hawaii in July and training reservists and other naval personnel for the rest of the year. After another brief overhaul at Hunter’s Point, DALLAS left for her third Korean tour on 27 January 1953.

This tour proved far less eventful than her first two. Although she did engage in periodic shore bombardment missions, DALLAS spent most of her sea time operating with the fast carriers. She was at sea with Task Force 77 when the armistice took effect on 27 July, and after a visit to Pusan, South Korea the cruiser departed for home, arriving at Long Beach on 2 September.

DALLAS sailed on her fourth WestPac deployment on 15 March 1954. Operating out of Sasebo and Yokosuka, Japan, the cruiser spent the next six months patrolling Korean waters and exercising with other units of the Seventh Fleet. The highlight of her cruise was a July visit to Hong Kong, and in October she returned to the United States.

Departing Long Beach for the Far East on 12 February 1955, DALLAS sailed via Pearl Harbor and Guam to Yokosuka, which she reached on 10 March. During her six-month deployment, the cruiser visited such ports as Hong Kong, Kaohsiung, Pusan, Okinawa, Manila, and Subic Bay, conducting exercises with other units of the Seventh Fleet as well as those of friendly countries in the region. She returned to Long Beach on 2 August.

The WestPac routine continued for the next several years. DALLAS made her sixth deployment from 5 January 1956 until 15 July of that year, she departed for her seventh WestPac on 1 December 1956 and returned on 7 May 1957, and her eighth WestPac lasted from 17 November 1957 until 29 April 1958.

Upon her return from her 1957-58 cruise, DALLAS entered the Puget Sound Naval Shipyard for a lengthy overhaul that saw her equipped to serve more effectively as Seventh Fleet flagship, a role she had often filled during her WestPac deployments. Emerging from the yard in November 1958, DALLAS operated in California waters until 21 January 1959, when she departed for her new homeport of Yokosuka, Japan. When she arrived there on 5 February, DALLAS became the first major American warship to be homeported in the Far East since before World War II. She stayed there for the next three and a half years, alternating flagship duty with such ships as PROVIDENCE (CLG-6) and OKLAHOMA CITY (CLG-5), until her return to the United States on 15 July 1962.

For the next four years, DALLAS operated as flagship of the First Fleet in the Pacific. Homeported at San Diego, her duties took her up and down the West Coast. She made annual midshipman cruises to Hawaii in 1963-65, and during her 1964 midshipman cruise scenes for the movie “In Harm’s Way,” starring John Wayne and Kirk Douglas, were filmed aboard.

However, the ship’s peacetime routine was about to be interrupted by another war: Vietnam. In April 1966, DALLAS sailed for the first of what would be five deployments to Vietnam. Every year from 1966 to 1970, DALLAS sailed from Long Beach in April and returned from Vietnam in October. Most of her operations fell under the scope of Operation Sea Dragon, the seaborne interdiction of North Vietnamese supply routes, both land and sea, with naval gunfire. Often assisted by Navy and Marine spotter aircraft and operating in company with American and Australian destroyers, DALLAS fired more than 75,000 rounds from her 8-inch battery alone - her 5-inch battery contributing another 100,000 - during these five deployments.

No matter how effective her gunfire was, DALLAS could not escape the cost-cutting measures that marked the gradual American withdrawal from Vietnam. Inactivated beginning in December 1970, the veteran heavy cruiser was decommissioned at Bremerton, Washington on 30 April 1971 and entered the Puget Sound Group, Pacific Reserve Fleet. Although considered for reactivation in the 1980s, nothing ever came of the proposals. Stricken on 9 July 1991, DALLAS remains at Puget Sound awaiting disposal.

DALLAS earned eight battle stars for service in Korea and nine battle stars, the Navy Unit Commendation, and two Meritorious Unit Commendations for service in Vietnam.

Enjoyable as ever, but darn, no Tomahawks? I mean clearly we need the Iowa class reactivated to counter the Kirov class, and Des Monies class to counter the Slava class.

Your patience will be rewarded in due time...