Some 80 years ago this week, a great view of the brand-new U.S. Navy Cleveland-class light cruiser USS Pasadena (CL-65) snapped from a Squadron ZP-11 blimp while underway off Boston at 1400 hrs on 21 July 1944. The ship’s position was 42 45’N, 70 50’W, course 110 degrees. Pasadena is painted in Camouflage Measure 32, Design 24d. Note two Kingfisher floatplanes on her stern and her large surface search radar
The official U.S. Navy photograph is now in the collections of the National Archives. Catalog #: 80-G-237944
A 15,000-ton “light” cruiser, CL-65 was the second naval vessel to carry the name of the California Rose City and was built by Bethlehem Steel in Quincy, Massachusetts, and was constructed in just 488 days, commissioning on 8 June 1944.
Following her shakedown cruise off the East Coast and in the Caribbean, Pasadena joined TF 38, the fast carrier force, at Ulithi just before Thanksgiving 1944 and was soon neck deep in operations against Luzon and Formosa in support of the Philippine campaign. She would earn five battle stars during World War II and witnessed the Japanese surrender in Tokyo Bay– anchored alongside Missouri– some 451 days after she was commissioned.
Unlike many of her sisters, she was able to take her war paint off and at least spend a few years in peacetime service before she was decommissioned on 12 January 1950, some 1,593 days after VJ Day.
Pasadena (CL-65) entering Pearl Harbor, Hawaii, during an NROTC Midshipmen’s cruise in the Summer of 1948. The photograph was released for publication on 9 August 1948. NH 98201.
Pasadena lingered in Pacific Reserve Fleet mothballs at Bremerton for 22 years– somehow skipping the Korean War– and was then sold for scrap, her name freed up for a Los Angeles-class attack submarine (SSN 752) that had her keep laid in 1986.