World War II
On 1 September, World War II started, and on 14 September, San Francisco moved south from Naval Station Norfolk to join the Neutrality Patrol. The cruiser carried freight and passengers to San Juan, Puerto Rico, thence sailed for a patrol of the West Indies as far south as Trinidad. On 14 October, she completed her patrol back at San Juan and headed for Norfolk, where she remained into January 1940. On 11 January, she headed for Guantanamo Bay, where she was relieved as flagship by Wichita, where she returned to the Pacific.
Transiting the Panama Canal in late February, she called at San Pedro and, in March, continued on to her new home port, Pearl Harbor, where she rejoined CruDiv 6. In May 1940, she steamed northwest to the Puget Sound Navy Yard for an overhaul, during which she also received four 3 in (76 mm) guns. On 29 September, she returned to Pearl Harbor. In early May 1941, she became flagship of CruDiv 6; and, at the end of July, she moved east for a cruise to Long Beach, California, returning to Hawaii on 27 August. In September, the flag of CruDiv 6 was hauled down; and on 11 October, San Francisco entered the Pearl Harbor Navy Yard for an overhaul which was scheduled for completion on 25 December.
Read more about this topic: USS San Francisco (CA-38)
Famous quotes containing the words world and/or war:
“Fate forces its way to the powerful and violent. With subservient obedience it will assume for years dependency on one individual: Caesar, Alexander, Napoleon, because it loves the elemental human being who grows to resemble it, the intangible element. Sometimes, and these are the most astonishing moments in world history, the thread of fate falls into the hands of a complete nobody but only for a twitching minute.”
—Stefan Zweig (18811942)
“Their bodies are buried in peace; but their name liveth for evermore.”
—Apocrypha. Ecclesiasticus, 44:14.
The line “their name liveth for evermore” was chosen by Rudyard Kipling on behalf of the Imperial War Graves Commission as an epitaph to be used in Commonwealth War Cemeteries. Kipling had himself lost a son in the fighting.