USS Cleveland (CL 55)

Prototype: USS Cleveland (CL-55) was the lead ship and one of the 27 United States Navy Cleveland-class light cruisers completed during or shortly after World War II. She was the second ship to be named for the city of Cleveland, Ohio.

Cleveland was commissioned in June 1942, and saw extensive service in the war, briefly in the Atlantic, and then in the Pacific theater. Like almost all of her sister ships, she was decommissioned shortly after the end of the war, and never saw active service again. Cleveland was scrapped in the early 1960s.

Class History: The Cleveland class was a group of light cruisers built for the U.S. Navy during World War II. The ships were designed with the goal of increased cruising range, anti-aircraft armament, torpedo protection, etc., compared with earlier U.S. cruisers. Fifty-two ships of this class were originally planned, but nine of them were completed as the light aircraft carriers of the Independence class, and two of them were completed to a somewhat different design, with more compact superstructures and just a single stack. These two were called the Fargo class. Of the 27 Cleveland-class cruisers that were commissioned, one (Galveston) was completed as a guided missile cruiser and five were later modified as Galveston and Providence-class guided missile cruisers. Following the naming convention at the time, all the ships completed as cruisers were named for US cities and towns.

Country: The U.S. is a country of 50 states covering a vast swath of North America, with Alaska in the northwest and Hawaii extending the nation’s presence into the Pacific Ocean. Major Atlantic Coast cities are New York, a global finance and culture center, and capital Washington, DC. Midwestern metropolis Chicago is known for influential architecture and on the west coast, Los Angeles' Hollywood is famed for filmmaking.