Authorized by two Congressional acts, one calling for eight vessels in December 1924 another sixteen (cruisers plus one carrier) in February 1929, the first ships built under the terms of the 1922 Washington Treaty, were constructed as a result of President Coolidge. He signed both bills into law not to renew an armaments race but to diffuse it, in order to leave the nation adequately defended when that day would come that parchment had failed and the discipline to remain at peace gave way to conflict again. No one could have known it would be a mere twelve years later that the attack on Pearl Harbor would unleash once more global war. While the first eight would be finished by 1930, only nine provided under the 1929 Cruiser Act would see completion. Together with the carrier, the first to be built as such from the keel up, these cruisers, provisioned under the 1929 Act approved by Coolidge, would be some of the most distinguished ships of the Second World War. It was the Coolidge Cruisers, and Coolidge Carrier, that saw every phase of operations in the Pacific and some of the pivotal events elsewhere, such as the Normandy landings and operations in the Mediterranean. Here is a look at each of these illustrious fighting ships, the nucleus of those which avoided destruction at Pearl Harbor and contributed mightily to pushing back the Japanese war machine and ultimately winning the war. It was Coolidge’s vision, a conviction that while no invincible force could ever be manufactured an adequate defense was essential to the preservation of American lives, property, and the Republic’s direct interests. Here they are, the seventeen Coolidge Cruisers and America’s first original carrier, with a particular look at where they were on that fateful day, 7 December 1941:

I. Pensacola Class: unique for its compact design, mixing a turret system (four total) usually paired with longer-hulled ships.

Earned thirteen Battle Stars for service rendered during World War II

Earned eleven Battle Stars

II. Northampton Class: added a forecastle deck for better movement through the water, especially rough seas, with three instead of the four turrets used by the Pensacola Class, allowing for greater space in the boiler rooms, increased aircraft space and compensating armor. The Class essentially set the standard for design and balance of speed with protective armor.

Earned six Battle Stars

Earned eleven Battle Stars

Earned thirteen Battle Stars

Earned three Battle Stars

Earned two Battle Stars

Earned three Battle Stars

III. Portland Class, containing three cruisers, form the first of those authorized under the Act signed by President Coolidge in 1929. They followed essentially the design of the Northampton Class.

Earned sixteen Battle Stars

Earned ten Battle Stars

IV. New Orleans Class: The result of a more thorough overhaul of the extant design, implementing a more scientific approach to balancing protection with the same speed and armament abilities of the earlier Pensacola and Northampton classes. Those designs, especially conscientious about the 10,000 ton displacement limit, resulted in vessels severely underweight by as much as a thousand tons. The New Orleans Class corrected this with a heavier complement of armored plating where it would be most vulnerable, the transfer of the magazine below the waterline, and the development of “safety zones” where armor was allocated based upon the nature of a ship’s tactical use and range of a given caliber of shell fired against it. Indiscriminately applied armor failed to adequately prepare vessels for the situations and weaponry they would face, the New Orleans redesign was an effort to correct that in America’s cruisers. Coolidge ensured that process of innovation and improvement could proceed long after he was gone. The nation would be better equipped for it.

USS Astoria (CA-34), was laid down one year and seven months after the 1929 Act, 1 September 1930 in Puget Sound Navy Yard, Bremerton, Washington. Reclassified as a heavy cruiser in July 1931, she was launched in December 1933. Beginning service career with the Asiatic Fleet, Astoria was screening Lexington seven hundred miles west of Hawaii when the Japanese attacked there. Joined by her sister USS Indianapolis to seek and destroy in the days after the attack, she then took part in operations in New Guinea, throughout the South Pacific as a protector of Lexington, then Yorktown at Midway. After covering the landings at Guadalcanal, she took sixty-five hits at Savo Island before sinking at sea.

Earned three Battle Stars

Earned sixteen Battle Stars

Earned sixteen Battle Stars

Earned seven Battle Stars

Earned seventeen Battle Stars

Earned one Battle Star

Earned two Battle Stars

Earned two Battle Stars

For further reading, see John Jordan’s Warships After Washington: The Development of the Five Major Fleets 1922-1930. Annapolis: Naval Institute Press, 2011; John T. Kuehn’s Agents of Innovation: The General Board and the Design of the Fleet That Defeated the Japanese Navy. Annapolis: Naval Institute Press, 2008; and Leo Marriot’s Treaty Cruisers: The First International Warship Building Competition. Barnsley: Maritime, 2005.