On This Day in History, April 23: Navy Yard Back In Business
No ships were launched at the Brooklyn Navy Yard between April 30, 1919 (USS Tennessee), and April 25, 1929. One reason for this was the Washington Disarmament Conference in 1921, which resulted in treaties among U.S., Britain, France, Japan, and Italy that limited naval armament. This restricted the numbers of capital ships a treaty-signing country’s fleet could have and resulted in the scrapping of two battleships then under construction at the Brooklyn Navy Yard.
Construction resumed at the Yard on the 10,000-ton heavy cruiser USS Pensacola on October 27, 1926. Launching was on April 25, 1929, and she was commissioned on February 6, 1930. The Pensacola was used in delivering troops to Midway Island shortly after the Battle of Midway (June 4-7, 1942).
The Japanese Admiral Raizo Tanaka’s Second Destroyer Flotilla had become known to the U.S. Marines as the “Tokyo Express.” At the Battle of Tassafaronga on November 28, 1942, Tanaka had eight destroyers and our U.S. Admiral Carleton H. Wright had five heavy cruisers, including the Pensacola, and seven destroyers. Although radar helped Wright get off the first shells and torpedoes, the American fire was ineffective, with only one Japanese destroyer sunk. In the Japanese counterattack, one cruiser was sunk and three, including the Pensacola, were damaged.