As part of the Navy's Fiscal Year 1956 shipbuilding and conversion program the never-commissioned light cruiser Galveston (CL-93), a member of the Atlantic Reserve Fleet since mid-1946, was taken out of "mothballs" and turned over to the Philadelphia Naval Shipyard for reconstruction as a guided missile ship. Redesignated CLG-93 in February 1956, as work was beginning, she received her difinitive hull number, CLG-3, in May 1957. Galveston was commissioned in May 1958 as the Navy's first ship to carry the "Talos" guided missile, a long-range, and quite large, anti-aircraft weapon. The ship had been extensively modified, especially aft of amidships, to equip her with magazines, a launcher and the radars associated with this new weapons system, and her first three years of active service were largely spent testing the "Talos" at sea off the U.S. East Coast and in the Caribbean region.
From mid-1961 to mid-1962 Galveston was back in shipyard hands, receiving new search radars among other modifications. She then transferred to the Pacific Fleet and in 1963-1964 made her first overseas deployment, a half-year tour with the Seventh Fleet in the Far East. Her second western Pacific cruise, in June-December 1965, included active involvement in the Vietnam War, with the cruiser using her five and six-inch guns to bombard the enemy ashore. She also provided air defense for Naval Forces operating in the Gulf of Tonkin and took part in search and rescue operations.
Early in 1967 Galveston was temporarily sent back to the Atlantic to serve a term in Mediterranean Sea with the Sixth Fleet. This tour, in March-August 1967, was marked by the short, but very intense, war in June between Israel and several Arab nations. In September the ship returned to the Pacific and about a year later began her third Seventh Fleet deployment, which featured more Vietnam war combat service. Returning to the U.S. in January 1969, Galveston again went to the Mediterranean in May of that year for a cruise that lasted until October. Later steaming back to her West Coast base, the ship soon commenced inactivation preparations, leading to her decommissioning in May 1970. USS Galveston's second stay in the Reserve Fleet lasted only a little more than three years. She was stricken from the Naval Vessel Register in December 1973 and sold for scrapping in May 1975.
This page features all the overall views we have of USS Galveston (CLG-3) after conversion to a guided missile cruiser, and provides links to other images concerning her actions, activities and disposition.
For more images related to this ship, see:
If you want higher resolution reproductions than the digital images presented here, see: "How to Obtain Photographic Reproductions." |
Click on the small photograph to prompt a larger view of the same image.
For more images related to this ship, see:
If you want higher resolution reproductions than the digital images presented here, see: "How to Obtain Photographic Reproductions." |
Page made 1 October 2003