Replies

Tet Begins

MACV's problems seemingly culminated on January 31, 1968, during the Tet cease-fire that marked the traditional Vietnamese celebration of the Lunar New Year. The day before, MACV had received reports of sporadic attacks, including some near Da Nang. Before dawn on January 31, VC insurgent forces and NVA Regulars launched a series of coordinated surprise attacks across South Vietnam. They hit more than 100 cities, towns and hamlets, as well as military bases and the U.S. Embassy in Saigon.

"Well, we knew something was coming," recalled Kerwin. "They [the NVA forces] were moving out all over the place. [On the night of January 30, 1968] I went down to my house, down almost in the center of Saigon. Of course, it was Tet night and they'd blow firecrackers all over the place as they do in Hawaii. I woke up about 2 in the morning, wondering what all of this bang, bang, bang was, and I just ordinarily thought it was the firecrackers, because I had heard them before. Then the phone rang, and they said that we were under attack and I'd better get down here right away.

"My Vietnamese driver slept in the other part of the building, and I got dressed in a hurry and out the door we went -- got the jeep and started down the long drive. I quickly saw that was not the thing to do, particularly since up ahead of us on the right-hand side of the main drag there was a military police outfit. They were under attack. So I tried to figure out what the hell to do. I thought, 'If I get off on the side streets, I'm liable to get killed myself. And I'm not sure in the middle of the night (it was a dark night in January) whether I can even get back to headquarters or not.'"

Marine tanks on Tran Cao Van Street near MACV compound, 1 Feb 1968

"So we quickly turned around and went back close to the house and waited for a while. Things didn't improve. It must have been 45 minutes or something like that. They were firing all over the damn place. We finally got out of there, and of course I went right down to the TOC to find out what the hell was going on. It was very difficult to do that, because everybody was being attacked everywhere."

At about 3 a.m., General Kerwin got a call from the JCS, who asked what was going on. "I said: 'To be frank with you, I'm not sure what the hell's going on. Everybody seems to be unaware. We're doing the best we can to get you the information. I'll have to call you back.'" Soon after that, he learned that the U.S. Embassy was under attack.

"Westy went down there because he thought if we lost that, it would appear that we'd lost the whole damn battle," Kerwin recalled. "He called me and said to get hold of General Fred Weyand, who had II Field Forces. He said to get the troops down here at this embassy."

"So I got hold of Fred on the radio, and by that time Fred had gotten the word. He sent down some troops. From there on out, my main job was to get a tactical picture. So, that was what I did -- get the staff really ginned up and get hold of various commanders. I got the picture for Westy because he was down there at the embassy. From then on out, the rest of that day, I slept in the headquarters and never got home."

Rangers Defend Saigon, TET 1968

Getting the staff organized was a considerable challenge, since many of the officers had a difficult time making their way to MACV headquarters on the 31st. "After the battle," Kerwin recalled, "that led to the establishment of a trailer park at the new headquarters [at Tan Son Nhut Air Base, a few miles to the north]. I said: 'We can't have this. Next time we may get a hell of a lot of people killed.' Of course, that's a part of combat, but the question was how to get people in hand so we could do something. So I said, 'Let's establish a trailer park up there for everybody.' But of course, that didn't help us at the time....You just shift as best you can. You tap everybody on the shoulder down in the operations center and say, 'Get a hold of those guys -- tell Khe Sanh I want this and I want that, and so forth.'"

As the situation developed that day, General Kerwin recalled, "In some places we weren't quite sure what was going on. It didn't look too bad -- we hadn't lost anything, I mean anything major. Of course, the battle for Hue developed more and more as time went on, and that turned out to be one hell of a fight. [As for] the embassy, of course, it was just psychological....If we lost that place, if the people inside got killed in our own embassy, that would be one hell of a blow psychologically. But that was not our problem [at MACV headquarters]. It was our job -- the whole damn staff -- to get information."

Turning to the Offensive

As Kerwin pieced together the scope of the enemy operation, he updated the MACV commander and the JCS in Washington. In the days that followed, American troops, South Vietnamese forces and a small contingent of other allied units gradually regained the initiative across the entire country. While there were some serious battles in the south, they were not of primary concern. The greatest challenge was keeping the north-south main supply routes open. As long as the allies could keep control of the highway and continue to move troops and supplies, Kerwin believed the situation in the south could be stabilized. Operationally, Westmoreland was most concerned about the attack on the city of Hue and the siege of the U.S. base at Khe Sanh (which Kerwin called Westmoreland's "pet project"). Both were in the northern part of the country. In addition to the Marines already fighting in the north, MACV redeployed the Army's 1st Cavalry Division from South Vietnam's central coast. Kerwin recalled that it was a difficult situation, mixing Army and Marines, as well as South Vietnamese forces, on the fly. "It could have gone down the tube up there," Kerwin said.

Saigon, South Vietnam, 1968: Gen. William Westmoreland, commander of the U.S. Military Assistance Command in Vietnam, points to a map of the southeast Asian country during a press conference.

The Marines, the Vietnamese forces and the more than 45,000 Army troops that MACV funneled into the area strained both the theater's tactical control and its logistical support structure in the following weeks. MACV also found itself battling incessantly to ensure that commanders gave the South Vietnamese forces enough air and artillery support so that they could make real contributions to the operation.

Worried that the northern provinces might fall to a North Vietnamese invasion, Westmoreland extended his operational control over the region by establishing a MACV forward headquarters at Phu Bai, just south of Hue. Troops in the area were under the command of Marine Lt. Gen. Robert E. Cushman of III Marine Amphibious Force (MAF). Westmoreland, however, ordered Deputy MACV Commander General Abrams to assume control over all forces in the area and conduct the fight for the northern provinces.

General Creighton Abrams

It was General Kerwin who suggested establishing the MACV forward headquarters. "It was always a question of accountability," he said, recalling discussions of that move. "This was a big step. If we were going to coordinate all of these people up there, somebody had to do it, and Abe had the stature to do it. We had Army, Navy, Air Force, Marines and everybody up there, [but] we didn't seem to be making much headway, if any. The question was, who's coordinating all of it, who's running that thing up there? It's an eyesore, it's left over, the rest of the place is pretty quiet. We've won that battle. So we talked about it and I said, 'Well, we've got to establish a headquarters up there and make sure things get under control.' Westy said, 'Abe, how about you?' Abe said, 'Sure.'

"Abe was a real team player. He established a headquarters up there. Meanwhile, it was my job to make him a staff. So I gave him my J3 [joint operations officer] and some staff. Some of them he personally asked for."

On occasion, General Kerwin became personally involved in the joint operations. "One day," he recalled, "there was a squabble going on up in the north about controlling the TACAIR [tactical air support]. You had the Army with their helicopters. You had the Navy and Marines. It was a hell of a problem with the coordination of the air campaign up there. So we had a meeting. Westy was there, Abe was there, and a couple of people from the embassy, as usual. Abe said, 'Let's send Dutch Kerwin up there.' Abe had read this book [General Lucian Truscott's Command Missions] and saw my name in there and what I had done in the middle of the night [at the Battle of Anzio during World War II], changing artillery plans for the division commanders."

Abrams apparently had assumed that if Kerwin could straighten out the artillery firing at the Anzio beachhead as a lieutenant colonel, he could make sense out of the air coordination in Vietnam as a two-star general. "I called up the Marines and the Army and everybody else and I said I wanted a meeting," recalled Kerwin. "They assembled this huge crowd in a great big general purpose tent. They must have had 150 or 200 people there. I started out by saying, 'You can't meet with this many people.' At the end of that meeting -- which lasted all day and part of the night -- we hadn't gotten anywhere.

"I came back to the headquarters and told Abe that it would require people who would settle down and stop fighting over prerogatives and things of that type. So I asked him to send three people down -- Army, Air Force and Marines -- one each, three people. They came down to the headquarters.

"Finally, after much debate, we came up with a set of rules about who was going to do what. It turned out pretty well, but I must admit that it could have been much better if we'd stopped working on everybody's prerogatives."

As U.S. and South Vietnamese troops pushed back the enemy in the north, the MACV staff turned their thinking to future operations, including thinking about the unthinkable -- the use of nuclear weapons. Kerwin, who had considerable experience in working with nuclear weapons, assembled a small planning team to consider the potential for employing tactical nuclear weapons against North Vietnam in the event the enemy attempted to repeat the Tet maneuver.

General William Westmoreland

"The idea was," Kerwin recalled, "that, suppose we did get authority. What would we do? It was shortly after Tet. We thought this was a good time to see what we could plan at a place called Vinh, on the coast. I got about four guys out of the staff, two of them Air Force -- nuclear business was big in the Air Force -- one Army, and one Marine."

"This team's purpose," said Kerwin, "was contingency planning in case we had a catastrophe. It wasn't a full-time job. We met two or three times a week just to discuss things and see what the planners had come up with. Basically the plan looked at using a few tactical Air Force weapons, bombs that we could drop on one focused, constricted area."

The choice of targets for such an operation, according to Kerwin, "depended on whether we had sufficient troops or not. One place we looked at was near Vinh, because that was the only main avenue of approach on the DMZ. Also, that would be a place where you could use a nuclear weapon, because you would have a target that was of sufficient size. You bottle up the enemy and then block the approach."

Eventually, the plan to use nuclear weapons was dropped when "somebody, somewhere heard about it." Looking back, Kerwin said: "I guess we should have expected that. We were told pretty firmly to knock it off."

Additional Sources:

www.3ad.net
militaryspecialtiesinc.com
www.oldspooksandspies.org
www.temple.edu
www.army.mil
history.acusd.edu
www.cc.gatech.edu
www.burnside.school.nz
www.time.com
www.tate.org.uk
www.stripes.com
history.searchbeat.com
www.historyplace.com

On This Day In History

Birthdates which occurred on July 21:
1620 Jean Picard, French astronomer
1676 Anthony Collins, English philosopher (A discourse on free-thinking)
1758 Elizabeth Hamilton, author (Cats: A Celebration)
1802 David Hunter, Major General (Union volunteers), died in 1886
1804 Victor Schoelcher Guadeloupe, abolished french slavery
1815 Stewart Van Vliet, Bvt Major General (Union Army), died in 1901
1816 Paul Julius Baron von Reuter founded Reuters news service
1826 James Gillpatrick Blunt, Major General (Union volunteers)
1828 John Rutter Brooke, Bvt Major General (Union volunteers)
1832 Henrietta Marie Morse King, cattlewoman
1856 Louise Blanchard Bethune 1st US woman architect
1864 Frances Folsom Cleveland 1st lady
1895 Ken Maynard, Texas, cowboy/actor/producer (Bigfoot)
1899 Ernest Hemmingway Oak Park, for whom the bell tolled... (Nobel 1954)
1899 Hart Crane US, poet (The Bridge)
1911 Marshall McLuhan Canada, writer (The Medium is the Massage)
1920 Isaac Stern Kremenetz, Russia, violinist (debut SF Symph)
1922 Kay Starr Dougherty Okla, singer (Rock & Roll Waltz, Club Oasis)
1924 Don Knotts Morgantown WV, actor (Andy Griffth Show, 3's Company)
1926 Norman Jewison director (Moonstruck, ...And Justice For All)
1931 Gene Littler golfer (1961 US Open)
1931 Gene Fullmer (International Boxing Hall of Famer: World Middleweight Champion [1957]
1938 Les Aspin, (Rep-D-Wisc, 1971-93)/Secretary of Defense (1993-94)
1943 Edward Herrmann Wash DC, actor (Day of the Dolphin, Reds)
1944 Paul Wellstone, (Sen-loony left-Minnesota)(Still dead)
1945 Alton Maddox NY black activist/attorney (Tawana Brawley case)
1946 Zbigniew Kaczmarek Poland, weightlifter (Olympic-gold-72-76)
1947 Cat Stevens aka Yusuf Islam, rocker (Peace Train, Father & Son)
1949 Ludmila Smirnova USSR, pairs figure skater (Olympic-silver-1972)
1952 Robin Williams Chicago Ill, comedian (Mork & Mindy, Good Morning Viet-Nam, Hook)
1957 Jon Lovitz Tarzana Calif, comedian (SNL)
1973 Ali Landry, Louisiana, Miss Universe-USA (1996)

Deaths which occurred on July 21:
1425 Manuel Paleologus, Byzantine Emperor (1391-1425)/writer, dies
1683 Lord William Russell, English plotter against Charles II, beheaded
1796 Robert Burns Scottish poet (Auld Lang Syne), dies
1861 Francis Stebbins Bartow, Confederate colonel, dies in battle at 44
1870 Josef Strauss, Austrian composer (Dynamids), dies at 42
1917 Christopher J Forster, British RAF-pilot/capt, dies in battle
1957 Bernard Spooner US inventor of bulletproof jacket, dies
1967 Basil Rathbone Johannesburg S Africa, actor(Capt. Levasseur-Captain Blood, Sherlock Holmes-The Hound of the Baskervilles, Narrator-The Wind in The Willow, dies at 75
1967 Jimmy Foxx baseball hall of famer
1972 Jigme Dori Wangchuck king of Bhutan, dies
1976 Christopher Ewart-Biggs Brit ambassador to Ireland is assassinated
1982 Dave Garroway TV host (Today Show), dies at 69
1985 Mickey Shaughnessy actor (Chicago Teddy Bears), dies at 65
1986 Virginia Hewitt actress (Carol-Space Patrol), dies at 60
1994 Marjorie Dorothy Chandler Collins, jazz singer, dies at 67
1996 Herb Edelman, actor (Odd Couple, St Elsewhere), dies of emphysema 62

GWOT Casualties

Iraq
21-Jul-2003 1 | US: 1 | UK: 0 | Other: 0
US Corporal Mark Anthony Bibby Baghdad Hostile - hostile fire - IED attack

21-Jul-2004 2 | US: 2 | UK: 0 | Other: 0
US Lance Corporal Mark E. Engel Brooke Army Med Center, TX Hostile - hostile fire
US Private 1st Class Nicholas H. Blodgett Ad Duluiyah - Salah ad Din Hostile - hostile fire - IED attack

Afghanistan
A Good Day

http://icasualties.org/oif/
Data research by Pat Kneisler
Designed and maintained by Michael White
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http://www.taps.org/
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On this day...
0230 St Pontianus begins his reign as Catholic Pope
0365 Alexandria hit by Earthquake; 50,000 die
1542 Pope Paul III begins inquisition against Protestants (Sactum Officium)

1588 English fleet defeats Spanish armada

1667 Peace of Breda ends the Second Anglo-Dutch War and Dutch cede New Amsterdam to the English
1669 John Lockes Constitution of English colony Carolina approved
1718 Turkish threat to Europe ends with the signing of the Treaty of Passarowitz between Austria, Venice and the Ottoman Empire.
1730 States of Holland put death penalty on "sodomy"
1773 Pope Clemens XIV bans Jesuits
1798 Napoleon Bonaparte wins Battle of Pyramids in Egypt
1831 Belgium gains independence from Netherland, Leopold I made king
1836 1st Canadian RR opens, between Laprairie & St John, Qu‚bec
1846 Mormons found 1st English settlement in Calif (San Joaquin Valley)

1861 1st major battle of Civil War ends (Bull Run/Manassas), Va-South wins

1865 Wild Bill Hickok kills gunman Dave Tutt in Springfield, Illinois, in the first formal quick-draw duel.
1866 Cholera-epidemic kills hundreds in London
1873 Jesse James, 1st train robbery (Adair, Iowa)
1880 Compressed air accident kills 20 workers on Hudson River tunnel, NY
1898 Spain cedes Guam to US
1900 Pope Leo XIII encyclical to the Greek-Melkite rite
1904 Camille Jenatzy sets world auto speed record at 65.79 MPH
1923 Phillies score 12 in 6th & beat Cubs 17-4
1930 US Veterans Administration established
1931 Reno race track, becomes 1st in US to use daily double wagering
1934 113ø F, near Gallipolis, Ohio (state record)
1935 C Jackson discovers asteroid #1358 Gaika
1940 Soviet Union annexes Estonia, Latvia, Lithuania
1941 Himmler orders the building of the Majdanek concentration camp. The camp was built in eastern Poland as a principal site to exterminate Jews. It contained 7 gas chambers
1941 200 Jewish Torahs are burned in Ukraine
1942 8 die as coal waste heap slides in river valley near Oakwood, Va
1944 US forces free Guam of Japanese invaders
1949 Senate ratifies North Atlantic Treaty by a vote of 82-13 (NATO)
1951 Dalai Lama returns to Tibet
1954 At Geneva, France agrees to independence of North & South Vietnam
1955 1st sub powered by liquid metal cooled reactor launched-Seawolf
1957 1st black to win a major US tennis tournament (Althea Gibson)
1959 1st atomic powered merchant ship, Savannah, christened, Camden NJ
1960 The short lived country of Katanga forms in Africa
1961 Launch of Mercury 4 (Liberty Bell) with Grissom
1962 160 civil right activists jailed after demonstration in Albany Ga
1965 Pakistan, Iran & Turkey sign Regional Co-Operation pact
1966 Gemini X returns to Earth
1968 Jan Janssen wins Tour de France: 1st Dutchman
1969 Russia's Luna 15 impacts moon after 52 lunar orbits
1970 Huge Aswan Dam opens in Egypt
1970 Libya orders confiscation of all Jewish property
1972 In New York, 57 murders occur in 24 hours
1973 "Bad, Bad Leroy Brown" reached the top spot on the "Billboard" pop-singles chart

1973 Hank Aaron becomes 2nd major leaguer to hit 700 HRs

1973 USSR launches Mars 4 for fly-by (2600 km) of the red planet
1974 Eddy Merckx wins his 5th Tour de France
1974 House Judiciary approves 2 Articles of Impeachment against Pres Nixon
1975 Billy Martin fired as Texas Rangers manager
1976 1st outbreak of "Legionnaire's Disease" kills 29 in Phila
1978 US Postal Service & unions agree on a contract averting mail strike
1979 National Women's Hall of Fame (Seneca Falls, NY) dedicated
1980 Jean-Claude Droyer climbs the Eiffel Tower in 2 hrs 18 mins (Hey Jean. You know they have an elevator don't you?)
1983 Polish govt ends 19 months of martial law
1983 US announces Lebanon freed American hostage David Dodge
1988 ESA's Ariane-3 launches 2 communications satellites (1 Indian)
1989 Eastern Airlines submits a reorganization plan to creditors

1989 Greg LeMond (US) wins Tour de France in fastest time

1989 Mike Tyson TKOs Carl "the Truth" Williams in 1:33 of 1st round
1990 Pink Floyds' "The Wall" is performed where the Berlin Wall once stood
1997 200-year-old USS Constitution sails under its own power
2000 A report from special counsel John Danforth clears Ex-AG Janet Reno and the government of wrongdoing in the fire that ended the Branch Davidian siege near Waco, Texas.
2002 WorldCom displaced Enron as the largest U.S. company ever to declare bankruptcy.
2002 Saddam kills 15 political dissidents in Abu Gharib prison
2003 Afghanistan's new national army launch their first major operation, sweeping for insurgents in the east of the country.

Holidays
Note: Some Holidays are only applicable on a given "day of the week"

Belgium : Independence Day (1831)
Bhutan : 3rd King of Bhutan's Death
Bolivia : Martyr's Day
Guam : Liberation Day (1944)
Mayan New Year.
National Junk Food Day
Take a Monkey to Lunch Day
Minority Tourism Month

Religious Observances
Christian : Commemoration of St Victor
RC : Memorial of St Lawrence of Brindisi, confessor/doctor (opt)
Feast of St. Paraxedes, virgin.

Religious History
1773 Clement XIV issued the brief, 'Dominus ac redemptor noster,' officially dissolvingthe Society of Jesus (Jesuits). This politically-based suppression afterward leftconspicuous gaps in Catholic education and foreign missions.
1829 Birth of public school teacher Priscilla Jane Owens. A Methodist who remained inBaltimore all her life, she left behind two enduring hymns: 'We Have an Anchor' and 'JesusSaves.'
1886 The cardinal's hat was conferred upon Elzear Alexandre Taschereau, 66, archbishopof Quebec. He was the first Canadian to be made a cardinal in the Catholic Church.
1925 Following a sensational 12-day trial, high school biology teacher John T. Scopeswas found guilty of teaching evolution in his Dayton, TN classroom and was fined $100.
1958 English apologist C.S. Lewis wrote in a letter: 'What the devil loves is thatvague cloud of unspecified guilt or unspecified virtue, by which he lures us into despairor presumption.'

Source: William D. Blake. ALMANAC OF THE CHRISTIAN CHURCH. Minneapolis: Bethany House, 1987.

LOUD ROCK SHOW MAKES TEEN'S HEAD EXPLODE!

By CHAD LOWENBRUCK

WINTHROP, Ind. -- When Gerry Tillis, 17, attended a show by the band Dirt Weasel at the Civic Sports and Arts Arena, he had no idea it would be his last concert.

"It was completely gross," said Tiffany Bonner, 16, Gerry's girlfriend. "The music was really loud during 'In the Dark Hole' and Gerry looked a little scary. Then during the next song his head suddenly exploded." She added, "And don't say I'm, like, his 'former' girlfriend because even though Jerry's skull fell all apart and he's dead, I'll love him forever. I saved a piece of his -- what did they call it? cranieminem? Something?"

Dirt Weasel is a five-man combo known for its towers of amplifiers -- called "Marshall stacks" in the trade -- and ultra-loud delivery. Band frontman and lead guitarist Jake "Snake Eyes" Ballard said nothing like this had ever happened before at a Dirt Weasel show.

"It was in the middle of the solo to 'Sit & Spin,' said Ballard, referring to one of the band's songs. "I went out into center stage like I usually do, to just, you know, blaze away. And this kid in a Goth T-shirt starting having like some sort of seizure. I thought he was just trying to start a mosh pit, right? But that's so retro and our auds are cooler than that."

"He was holding Tiffany's waist," said Gerry's friend Esteban. "We both were 'cause we, like, share her. And I thought he was having like this totally rad time when he blew up real good. The thing is, he wasn't the only one. I heard two other melons pop somewhere in the crowd."

In fact, five young heads ceased to exist that night according to the Winthrop Sheriff 's Department. The local D.A. is considering manslaughter charges against the band.

Prof. Calvin Mittridge from Indiana Polytechnic Junior College theorizes that the explosions had something to do with loud noise interacting with a specific electrical frequency in Gerry Tillis' brain.

"The five victims were 'heavily into' a certain wavelength, to use the vernacular," said Prof. Mittridge. "The music was on the same wavelength and amped the teens up. The result was like having your head in a microwave oven."

Local religious groups had picketed the concert, claiming Dirt Weasel was the music of the Devil. They view this as a vindication of their beliefs.

"I see that no churchgoers got hurt," said Beth Norman, a local deaconess. "Only sinners would go to a thing like that, and as you can see several of them were made to reap the whirlwind."

"Man, dumb lady don't know diddle," said Esteban. " 'Reap the Whirlwind' -- that's an Angel Corpse song. Anyway, we weren't singing like she said. How could we . . . we didn't even know any of the song's lyrics."

Dirt Weasel has no plans to cancel any of its upcoming shows, though they may turn down the volume just a tad.

"We're as concerned about the structural integrity of the arenas as we are about individual brain pans," said promoter Kris Robbie.

Tiffany Bonner said she'll attend another show by the band. "Like, just as a tribute to Gerry. And if my head explodes at least I'll be with him. I mean, death is tragic and everything, but life goes on."

Thought for the day :
"Always do sober what you said you'd do drunk. That will teach you to keep your mouth shut."
Ernest Hemingway

Today's classic warship, USS Savannah (CL-42)

Brooklyn class light cruiser

Displacement: 9,475 t.
Length: 608”
Beam: 69’
Draft: 19’2”
Speed: 32 k.
Complement: 868
Armament: 15 6”; 8 5”; 4 aircraft

USS SAVANNAH (CL-42) was laid down on 31 May 1934 by the New York Shipbuilding Association, Camden N.J.; launched on 8 May 1937; sponsored by Miss Jayne Maye Bowden, niece of Senator Richard B. Russell, Jr., of Georgia; and commissioned in the Philadelphia Navy Yard on 10 March 1938, Capt. Robert C. Griffin in command.

Following a shakedown cruise to Cuba and Haiti in the spring, SAVANNAH returned to Philadelphia on 3 June for alterations followed by final trials off Rockland, Maine. The cruiser, prepared to protect American nationals should war break out in Europe, sailed from Philadelphia for England on 26 September and reached Portsmouth on 4 October. However, the Munich agreement had postponed war, so SAVANNAH returned to Norfolk on 18 October. Following winter maneuvers in the Caribbean, the light cruiser visited her namesake city, Savannah, Ga., from 12 to 20 April 1939. She got underway from Norfolk on 26 May; transited the Panama Canal on 1 June; arrived at San Diego on the 17th; and soon shifted to Long Beach.

SAVANNAH arrived at Pearl Harbor on 21 May 1940 and conducted battle readiness and training operations in Hawaiian waters until 8 November. The light cruiser returned to Long Beach on 14 November and soon thereafter was overhauled in the Mare Island Navy Yard. She steamed back into Pearl Harbor on 27 January 1941 and remained on the Hawaiian Sea Frontier until 19 May, when she set course for the Panama Canal and reached Boston via Cuba on 17 June.

As the flagship of Cruiser Division 8, SAVANNAH conducted Neutrality Patrol in waters ranging south to Cuba and back up the seaboard to the Virginia Capes. On 25 August, she got underway from Norfolk to patrol in the South Atlantic as far as Trinidad and the Martin Vaz Islands in the screen of aircraft carrier WASP (CV-7). The task group then swept north from Bermuda to Argentia, Newfoundland, where SAVANNAH arrived on 23 September. During the next eight weeks, the cruiser helped cover British merchantmen and Allied convoys to within a few hundred miles of the British Isles, replenishing at Casco Bay, Me., or at New York.

SAVANNAH was in New York Harbor when the Japanese attacked Pearl Harbor on 7 December 1941. She sailed that day for Casco Bay, and thence proceeded via Bermuda to Brazil, arriving at Recife on 12 January 1942. She joined the screen of aircraft carrier RANGER (CV-4) in patrolling north of Bermuda. That island became the cruiser's base as she watched over Vichy French warships based at Martinique and at Guadaloupe in the French West Indies. She departed Shelly Bay, Bermuda, on 7 June and entered the Boston Navy Yard two days later for an overhaul, completed by 15 August. SAVANNAH then sailed for readiness exercises in the Chesapeake Bay that would prepare her for the invasion of North Africa.

The cruiser became a unit of Admiral H. Kent Hewitt's Western Naval Task Force which would land some 35,000 Army troops and 250 tanks at three different points on the Atlantic coast of French Morocco. As part of the Northern Attack Group, commanded by Rear Admiral Monroe Kelly, SAVANNAH departed Norfolk on 24 October and rendezvoused with the Western Naval Task Force four days later at a point about 450 miles south southeast of Cape Race. The Task Force, including the outer screen, covered an area approximately 20 by 30 miles, making it the greatest war fleet sent out by the United States up to that time. Shortly before midnight on the night of 7-8 November, three separate task groups closed on three different points on the Moroccan coast to begin Operation "Torch."

SAVANNAH's Northern Attack Group was to land Brigadier General Lucian K. Truscott, Jr.'s 9,099 officers and men, including 65 light tanks, on five widely separated beaches on either side of Mehedia. Their objectives were the Port Lyautey city and all-weather airfield, the Wadi Sebou, and the Sale airfield.

On the morning of the 8th, SAVANNAH commenced firing against Vichy guns near the Kasba, which had been firing on the landing boats. She also temporarily silenced a battery which had opened up on ROE (DD-418), enabling the destroyer to avoid disaster. By the next morning, SAVANNAH's six-inch guns had scored a direct hit on one of the two 138mm guns in fortress Kasba and had silenced the other.

During that same day, SAVANNAH's scout planes set a new style in warfare by successfully bombing tank columns with depth charges, whose fuses had been altered to detonate on impact. The scout planes, maintaining eight hours of flying time daily, struck at other fire targets, and also kept up antisubmarine patrol. SAVANNAH's planes located an enemy battery which had been firing on the destroyer DALLAS (DD-199), and eliminated it with two well-placed depth charges.

This action aided DALLAS in winning the Presidential Unit Citation for safely landing a U.S. Army Raider Battalion up the obstacle-strewn Wadi Sebou, just off the airport near Port Lyautey.

SAVANNAH's scout planes again bombed and strafed enemy tanks on the Rabat Road on the morning of 10 November. Throughout the day, her gunfire aided the Army advance. Hostilities fittingly ended on Armistice Day, 11 November. Four days later, the light cruiser headed home and reached Norfolk on the last day of November. After brief voyage repairs at New York, she sailed on 25 December to join the South Atlantic Patrol, arriving at Recife, Brazil, on 7 January 1943.

SAVANNAH's primary concern was the destruction of Nazi blockade runners in the South Atlantic. Teaming with escort carrier SANTEE (CVE-29) and a destroyer screen, she put to sea on 12 January on an arduous patrol that brought no results. She put back into Recife on 15 February and again steamed out to search for blockade runners on the 21st. On 11 March, she departed the formation with destroyer EBERLE (DD-430), to investigate a ship which had been sighted by an aircraft from SANTEE.

The German blockade runner, KOTA KJANDI, a former Dutch ship called KARIN by her crew, was brought to by shots fired across her bow by the two American warships. As a boarding party from EBERLE arrived alongside, powerful time bombs, planted just before the KARIN’s lifeboats got underway, exploded. Eleven of the boarding party were killed, but a SAVANNAH boat rescued three from the water. SAVANNAH also received 72 German survivors on board, quartering them below decks as prisoners of war. She returned to New York on 28 March and was overhauled to prepare her for a Mediterranean assignment.

SAVANNAH departed Norfolk on 10 May 1943 to protect troop transports en route to Oran, Algeria. She arrived there on 23 May and began preparing for Operation "Husky:" landings on the coast of Sicily at Gela. The cliffy coast there was topped by heavy coastal defense batteries, and no landing place could be found short of a 5,000-yard stretch of shore about a mile east of the mouth of the Gela River. Poised on the plateau above was the Hermann Goering Panzer Division, ready to strike with other combat troops.

SAVANNAH provided fire support to the 1st Infantry "Rangers" before dawn on 10 July. As soon as the first light appeared, the cruiser launched several scout planes. Swift German Messerschmitts intercepted with tragic results. Senior aviator Lt. C. A. Anderson was killed in flight, although his radioman, Edward J. True, was able to land the riddled plane on the sea and get picked up shortly after the plane went under. Three of SAVANNAH’s four spotter planes were shot down that day.

On the morning of 11 July, the ship was the first to respond to a call for naval gunfire at two points on a road leading into Gela. She knocked out several tanks before shifting her fire to the Butera road to aid advancing American infantry. Soon, friend and foe became so enmeshed in the battle, that naval gunfire could no longer intervene. The cruiser destroyed more tanks later in the afternoon, however, and she finished out the remaining hours of daylight by helping the "Rangers" repel an Italian infantry attack.

The next morning, SAVANNAH supported them with more than 500 rounds of 6-inch projectiles as they advanced toward Butera. That day, she gave medical attention to 41 wounded infantrymen, hit enemy troop concentrations far inland, and shelled their batteries high in the hills. On 13 July, SAVANNAH had but one call for naval gunfire; she answered by hurling several salvos on the hill town of Butera. Before the 1st Division pressed on into the interior, it thanked SAVANNAH for "crushing three infantry attacks and silencing four artillery batteries" as well as for demoralizing the Italian troops by the effect of her fire. The next day, SAVANNAH sailed for Algiers.

SAVANNAH returned to Sicily on 19 July 1943 to support the 7th Army's advance along the coast. On 30 July, carrying the pennant of Rear Admiral Lyal A. Davidson, the fighting ship arrived at Palermo Harbor to provide daily fire support. Her guns helped to repel enemy aircraft raiding the harbor on 1 and 4 August. On the 8th, her task force supported the landing of the 30th Regimental Combat Team, including artillery and tanks, on a beach nine miles east of Monte Fratello.

SAVANNAH returned to Algiers on 10 August to train with Army units for the invasion landings to be made at Salerno. Leaving Mers-el-Kebir Harbor on 5 September, her Southern Attack Force entered Salerno Bay a few hours before midnight of the 8th.

SAVANNAH was the first United States ship to open fire against the German shore defenses in Salerno Bay. She silenced a railway battery with 57 rounds, forced the retirement of enemy tanks, and completed eight more fire support missions that day. She continued her valuable support until the morning of 11 September when she was put out of action.

A radio-controlled glide-bomb had been released at a safe distance by a high flying German plane and exploded on sister cruiser PHILADELPHIA (CL-41). SAVANNAH increased her speed to 20 knots as a twin-engined Dornier (Do-217) bomber came in out of the sun. United States P-38 fighter aircraft and SAVANNAH's gunners, tracking the plane at 18,700 feet, failed to stop the smoke-trailed bomb. It pierced through the armored turret roof of the Number 3 Gun Turret, passed through three decks into the lower handling room where it exploded a gaping hole in the bottom, and tore open a seam in the ship's port side. For a half hour, secondary explosions in the gun room hampered firefighting efforts.

Working quickly, the crew sealed off flooded and burned compartments, and corrected her list. With some assistance from ocean-going tugs HOPI (AT-71) and MORENO (AT-87), she got underway on her own power by 1757, bound for Malta.

SAVANNAH lost 197 men in this action. Fifteen others were seriously wounded, while four were sealed in a watertight compartment for 60 hours. These four were not rescued until SAVANNAH had already arrived at Grand Harbor, Valletta, Malta, on 12 September.

After completing emergency repairs, SAVANNAH departed on 7 December for Philadelphia by way of Tunisia, Algiers, and Bermuda. She arrived on 23 December and remained there for the next eight months. While her battle damage was being repaired, an additional secondary battery and a new antiaircraft battery were installed.

SAVANNAH's navy yard overhaul was completed on 4 September 1944; she was underway the next day, and reported to the Commander, Fleet Operational Training Command on 10 September for shakedown and refresher training. She returned to Norfolk on 12 October for readiness training with Cruiser Division 8 and sailed on 21 January 1945 to rendezvous with cruiser QUINCY (CA-39), carrying President Roosevelt to the Mediterranean, en route to the Crimea, for a conference with Churchill and Stalin.

SAVANNAH entered Grand Harbor, Valletta, Malta, on 2 February. There, the President and his party debarked and continued on to Yalta by air. A memorial service was held at the graves of SAVANNAH's men killed in action off Salerno, before she departed Valleta on 9 February and steamed to Alexandria, Egypt, to await the President who returned to QUINCY on the 12th. The Presidential convoy departed the Nile delta on the 15th and returned to Hampton Roads on 27 February. SAVANNAH got underway the next day and reached her new base, Newport, R.I., on 8 March. Until 24 May, she operated as a schoolship for nucleus crews of ships not yet commissioned.

After a visit to New York and installation of radar guided fire control equipment for her 40 millimeter antiaircraft guns, SAVANNAH became flagship of a midshipman training squadron under Rear Admiral Frank E. Beatty. She departed Annapolis on 7 June for training at sea with over 400 midshipmen embarked. After two such cruises to Cuba, SAVANNAH debarked the midshipmen at Annapolis on 30 September, took on others, and sailed on 1 October for Pensacola, Fla. She spent the Navy Day celebrations from 25 to 30 October 1945 in her namesake city. She returned to Norfolk on 1 November to prepare for service in the "Magic Carpet" fleet returning veterans home from overseas.

SAVANNAH departed Norfolk on 13 November and reached Le Havre on the 20th. The following day, she put to sea with 1,370 men and 67 officer passengers bringing them to New York Harbor on 28 November. She returned from a similar voyage on 17 December.

The light cruiser was shifted to the Philadelphia Navy Yard on 19 December 1945 for inactivation overhaul. She was placed in commission in reserve on 22 April 1946 and finally decommissioned on 3 February 1947. Her name was struck from the Navy list on 1 March 1959, and she was sold for scrapping on 25 January 1966 to the Bethlehem Steel Co.

SAVANNAH received three battle stars for World War II service.