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USS Omaha (CL-4)
Omaha-class light cruiser / From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
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USS Omaha (CL-4) was the lead ship of the Omaha-class light cruiser of the United States Navy. She was originally classified as a scout cruiser. She was the second US Navy ship named for the city of Omaha, Nebraska, the first being Omaha, a screw sloop launched in 1869.
![]() USS Omaha (CL-4), in New York Harbor, 10 February 1943. | |
History | |
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Name | Omaha |
Namesake | City of Omaha, Nebraska |
Ordered | 29 August 1916 |
Awarded |
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Builder | Todd Dry Dock and Construction Company, Tacoma, Washington |
Cost | $1,541,396 (cost of hull & machinery)[1] |
Laid down | 6 December 1918 |
Launched | 14 December 1920 |
Sponsored by | Louise Bushnell White |
Completed | 1 August 1921 |
Commissioned | 24 February 1923 |
Decommissioned | 1 November 1945 |
Stricken | 28 November 1945 |
Identification |
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Honors and awards | ![]() |
Fate | Scrapped, February 1946 |
General characteristics (as built)[2][3] | |
Class and type | Omaha-class light cruiser |
Displacement | |
Length | |
Beam | 55 ft (17 m) |
Draft | 14 ft 3 in (4.34 m) (mean) |
Installed power |
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Propulsion |
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Speed |
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Crew | 29 officers 429 enlisted (peacetime) |
Armament |
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Armor |
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Aircraft carried | 2 × floatplanes |
Aviation facilities | |
General characteristics (1945)[4] | |
Armament |
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Omaha spent most of her career in the Pacific. At this time her primary mission was training, and she proved to be very capable by consistently winning fleet awards in gunnery and communications. She made many ports-of-call throughout the Pacific, Mediterranean and Caribbean during her peacetime cruises, displaying the Stars and Stripes. In 1941, prior to the US entering the war, she was assigned to Neutrality Patrol in the Atlantic, based in Recife, Brazil. Nearly a month before the US entered the war she captured the German blockade runner SS Odenwald, for which her crew won an award in salvage from a federal court sitting as a court of admiralty.
After the US entered the war she continued her activities of guarding convoys in the Atlantic between South America and Western Africa. During this time she sank two German blockade runners and was responsible for rescuing many crewmen whose ships had been sunk by Axis submarines and merchant raiders. In 1944, she sailed for the Mediterranean to support Operation Dragoon, the invasion of the south of France. After the war she was quickly deemed surplus and scrapped at the Philadelphia Naval Shipyard in February 1946.