![]() ![]() The USS Portland was the only American ship at all three of the battles that reversed the Japanese victory march across the Pacific, Generous writes. ![]() “When these guys describe to me how they lived and what they did, I was on their same page.” But he could identify with the former sailors. He saw a little combat, but “nothing compared to what the Portland did,” he says. Generous studied a year’s worth of the ship’s newspaper, interviewed about twenty men who served on the USS Portland, and corresponded with many more by letter and email. “But when so many of the battleships got sunk at Pearl Harbor, in the first hour of the war, we had to use the cruisers.” They didn’t have the firepower of battleships but had plenty of antiaircraft artillery. ![]() World War II cruisers were originally designed to chase down enemy commercial ships and to protect carriers, Generous says. “Cruisers are tough, hardworking ships,” Generous says. Maybe it’s their medium size - bigger than a destroyer but smaller than a battleship. Battleships turned into museums are common, but not a single cruiser has been preserved that way. But, “She was razor blades in 1959.” Turned to scrap.Ĭruisers, Generous says, have been forgotten. “She was the greatest heavy cruiser of all time,” says Thomas Generous, adjunct associate professor in the Curriculum in Peace, War, and Defense. The USS Portland ( CA-33) - Sweet Pea to her crew - was a fighting ship, serving in the Battle of the Coral Sea, the Battle of Midway, the naval battle of Guadalcanal, and almost every other battle fought in the Pacific Ocean during World War II. The University Press of Kentucky, 312 pages, $29.95. ![]() Sweet Pea at War: A History of USS Portland ( CA-33). ![]()
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