USS Pittsburgh survived loss of bow

Typhoon winds pounded the sea onto the sailors like nails hitting barn wood. It was shortly before 6 a.m. June 5, 1945, and waves more than 10 stories tall washed over the USS Pittsburgh and its crew of 1,142 men as they steamed southeast of Japan's Ryuku Islands.

Then gusts sheared the ship's scout plane from the portside catapult, and sea blasts tore off 104 feet of bow in front of the forward gun turrets. The heavy cruiser that had survived brutal fighting off the Japanese mainland and Okinawa was close to sinking.

"There we were, without a bow and in the storm. We had a long way to go, and we weren't sure we were going to make it," said Northampton's Robert G. Crawford, 87, a Yeoman First Class and anti-aircraft gunner. "But we'd been on ship so long, and we'd seen quite a bit of action. I thought, 'With what we've been through, we've got to make it.' And we did."

For the next six hours the seas surged, and the USS Pittsburgh dodged the floating bow, which the crew nicknamed "The Mighty McKeesport" after the Steel City's neighbor. Then she pushed on to Guam for emergency repairs, a five-day voyage that left sailors praying the ship's watertight hatches -- propped tight against the ocean with timbers -- would hold.

"The USS Pittsburgh was a Baltimore-class heavy cruiser, and the problem the crew experienced with the bow was similar to what happened to other cruisers of that class," said Charles Haberlein, chief curator of the Naval Historical Center in the Washington, D.C., Naval Yard. "But those structures had been lost to torpedoes. That a piece of the ship broke off during a storm showed just how serious the structural problem could be."

Historians blame the USS Pittsburgh's bow defect on welding technology that hadn't fully matured, a problem exacerbated by wartime production demands. But the ship survived the trip to Guam, and after a series of refittings remained in the fleet sporadically until her decommissioning on Aug. 28, 1956. The Navy scrapped her in 1974.

Four U.S. warships have been named either the "Pittsburg" or "Pittsburgh." The first was a Civil War ironclad gunboat. The second was a renamed armored cruiser that patrolled for German submarines in World War I. The USS Pittsburgh that plies the seas today is a nuclear sub, at 360 feet long about half the size of its namesake from World War II.

Additional Information:

Pitt Fact

The USS Pittsburgh defended aircraft carriers during their assaults on Okinawa, Iwo Jima and the Japanese mainland. On March 19, 1945, the USS Pittsburgh's crew yanked 34 sailors from the water and then affixed a tow line to save which burning carrier?

A) USS Santa Fe

B) USS Franklin

C) USS Lexington

D) None of the above.

Answer: B) USS Franklin.

Source: U.S. Navy's Naval Historical Center