USS Tuscaloosa (CA-37) - Inter-war Period

Inter-war Period

Tuscaloosa devoted the autumn to a shakedown cruise which took her to Rio de Janeiro, Buenos Aires, and Montevideo, before she returned to the New York Navy Yard shortly before Christmas. She then underwent post-shakedown repairs which kept her in the yard into March 1935.

The heavy cruiser soon shaped a course for the west coast. After a stop at Guantánamo Bay, Cuba, she transited the Panama Canal on 7–8 April and then steamed north to San Diego, where she joined Cruiser Division 6 (CruDiv 6) in time to participate in Fleet Problem XVI staged in May in the northern Pacific off the coast of Alaska and in waters surrounding the Hawaiian Islands. This operation was divided into five distinct phases which might be aspects of some real naval campaign of the future in which the United States would take the strategic offensive.

Tuscaloosa subsequently was based at San Pedro, California, whence she conducted routine exercises and local operations with CruDiv 6. In the spring of 1936, the heavy cruiser participated in Fleet Problem XVII, taking place off the west coast of the United States, Central America, and the Panama Canal Zone. The five phase exercise was devoted to preparing the fleet for antisubmarine operations, testing communications systems, and training of aircraft patrol squadrons for extended fleet operations.

In May 1937, the Fleet again exercised in Alaskan waters and in the vicinity of the Hawaiian Islands and Midway, practicing the tactics of seizing advanced base sites - a technique later to be polished to a high degree into close support and amphibious warfare doctrines. Tuscaloosa, as part of the "augmented" Scouting Force, "battled" the Battle Force that spring.

In April and May 1938, the heavy cruiser participated in Fleet Problem XIX, which was conducted in the vicinity of Hawaii.

Tuscaloosa departed San Diego on 3 January 1939 and proceeded, via the Panama Canal, to the Caribbean. She took part in Fleet Problem XX, in the Atlantic to the east of the Lesser Antilles, before undergoing a brief refit at the Norfolk Navy Yard. She then joined San Francisco and Quincy for a goodwill tour of South American ports. From 8 April to 10 May, the division—under the command of Rear Admiral Husband E. Kimmel—visited Caracas, Rio de Janeiro, Montevideo, and Buenos Aires before transiting the storm-tossed Strait of Magellan. The three cruisers drove their bows deep into heavy seas and battled gale-force winds as they made the difficult passage on 14–15 May. The division then sailed up the west coast of South America, visiting Valparaíso, Chile, and Callao, Peru, before transiting the Panama Canal and returning to Norfolk, where she arrived on 6 June.

Tuscaloosa remained off the east coast into the summer of 1939. In August, she carried President Franklin Delano Roosevelt to Campobello Island, New Brunswick. En route, off Portsmouth, New Hampshire, the Commander in Chief witnessed salvage operations in progress on the sunken Squalus which had stayed down after a test dive on 24 May. On 24 August, following visits to Campobello and several ports in Newfoundland, President Roosevelt disembarked at Sandy Hook on the coast of New Jersey.