80 years ago today: A trio of rather different U.S. Navy heavy cruisers: (listed from left to right) the sisters USS Salt Lake City (CA-25) and USS Pensacola (CA-24), along with the lead shp of her class, USS New Orleans (CA-32), nested together at Pearl Harbor, 31 October 1943. Note the varied radar antennas, gun directors, and 8-inch guns on these three cruisers.
Official U.S. Navy photo 80-G-264236 from the U.S. Navy Naval History and Heritage Command
Going past the cruisers, Ford Island is at the left, with the sunken (though still in commission) battleship USS Oklahoma (BB-37) under salvage at the extreme left, just beyond Salt Lake City’s forward superstructure. Two New Mexico-class battleships are visible in the background between Pensacola and New Orleans.
As for the above cruisers, while the New York-built SLC (aka “Swayback Maru”) and P’Cola (the “Grey Ghost”) are sisters and were commissioned within three months of each other, note the different radar fits, with the former carrying a CXAM and the latter an SG, like the newer USS New Orleans (“the NO Boat”) at dockside.
When it came to main guns, while all three carried the same general 8″/55 cal guns, typically re-gunned during WWII with Mark 14 variants, the Pensacolas had cramped gun houses with fixed below-deck magazine handling rooms to save treaty tonnage (at the sake of poor dispersion patterns) while New Orleans had much more efficient gun turrets with both more room and rotating stalks, albeit at a weight gain of about 50 tons per turret.
Of note, Salt Lake City had just returned to service in this photo after seven months under repair following heavy damage from Japanese cruiser fire in the Komandorski Islands.
In all, the three above cruisers would earn no less than 41 battle stars (with New Orleans holding 17 of those) for their WWII service. As a reward, the older two were disposed of as Atomic targets shortly after the war while New Orleans, after 12 years in mothballs, was sold for scrap in 1959.