Post Korean War and Fate
During her regularly scheduled yard period at Mare Island, 4 May to 7 September 1953, her 20 mm. and 40 mm. batteries were replaced with 3 inch/50 rapid-fire guns. Coastal refresher training was followed by a 5 January 1954 departure for WestPac. The normal exercises and port calls of a WestPac deployment ended with her departure from Yokosuka 29 May for the west coast.
In February 1955, Rochester served on her fifth WestPac deployment, completing that cruise 6 August and arriving at her homeport the 22d. An overhaul at the San Francisco Naval Shipyard commenced 19 November 1955 and was completed 7 March 1956. Thence came refresher training and preparations for yet another WestPac deployment. This sixth Pacific tour commenced 29 May when Rochester and her escorts stood out of Long Beach. It was 16 December when the ships returned to homeport.
The first week of June 1957 found Rochester in San Francisco, where she acted as flagship for Fleet Adm. Chester W. Nimitz as he reviewed the 1st Fleet. Returning to Long Beach the 18th, she resumed local operations and exercises until her departure on 3 September for her seventh WestPac deployment. She returned to Long Beach 24 March 1958. Two more WestPac deployments followed, 6 January to 17 June 1959 and 5 April to 29 October 1960.
While planning was in place to convert her into an Albany-class guided missile cruiser, funds were not appropriated and Rochester was ordered to report to the Commander, Bremerton Group, Pacific Reserve Fleet on 15 April 1961 for inactivation. She departed Long Beach 12 April, reported to the Puget Sound Naval Shipyard, and she was placed out of commission, in reserve, 15 August 1961. She remained at Bremerton until struck from the Navy list on 1 October 1973 and sold to Zidell Explorations, Portland, Oregon on 31 July 1974 and scrapped.
Rochester received six battle stars for Korean War service.
Read more about this topic: USS Rochester (CA-124)
Famous quotes containing the words post, war and/or fate:
“My business is stanching blood and feeding fainting men; my post the open field between the bullet and the hospital. I sometimes discuss the application of a compress or a wisp of hay under a broken limb, but not the bearing and merits of a political movement. I make gruel—not speeches; I write letters home for wounded soldiers, not political addresses.”
—Clara Barton (1821–1912)
“In peacetime, they had all been normal decent, cowards, frightened of their wives, trembling before their bosses, terrified at the passing of the years, but war had made them gallant. They had been greedy men. Now they were self-sacrificing. They had been selfish. Now they were generous. War isn’t hell at all. It’s man at his best, the highest morality he is capable of.”
—Paddy Chayefsky (1923–1981)
“The Battle of Waterloo is a work of art with tension and drama with its unceasing change from hope to fear and back again, change which suddenly dissolves into a moment of extreme catastrophe, a model tragedy because the fate of Europe was determined within this individual fate.”
—Stefan Zweig (18811942)