The USS Tuscaloosa (CA-37) was a World War II-era U.S. Navy heavy cruiser that the Navy named for the city of Tuscaloosa, Tuscaloosa County. During the war, the ship participated in the 1942 landings in North Africa; the June 6, 1944, D-Day invasion of France; the August 1944 invasion of southern France; and the 1945 invasions of the islands of Iwo Jima and Okinawa in the Pacific Theatre of Operations. It was the only ship of the seven-member New Orleans class to survive the war without sinking or sustaining major damage. An LST-1187 amphibious landing ship launched in 1969 was also named the USS Tuscaloosa.

The Tuscaloosa conducted a test run, known as a shakedown cruise, along the eastern coast of South America and completed post-shakedown repairs at the New York Navy Yard. In late March 1935, the ship sailed around South America, through the dangerous Straits of Magellan, to join Cruiser Division 6, based at San Pedro, California, and participated in the first of several naval exercises in the late 1930s off the coast of Alaska and in the waters around Hawaii and Midway Island. In early January 1939, the Tuscaloosa left San Diego for assignment to the Atlantic Fleet to participate in fleet exercises and operations in the Atlantic Ocean and Caribbean Sea. In April and May 1939, with two other warships, the Tuscaloosa sailed down the east coast and up the west coast of South America, and back to the Atlantic through the Panama Canal on a goodwill tour. In August, the ship carried Pres. Franklin D. Roosevelt to his vacation home on Campobello Island, New Brunswick, Canada, and to several ports in Newfoundland.
After World War II began, the Tuscaloosa joined the Neutrality Patrol, monitoring German merchant ships and warships in the waters of the Western Hemisphere and later extended to include Iceland and Greenland. After gunnery training and exercises in the Caribbean during early autumn, the ship joined other U.S. warships in mid-December, searching for the North German Lloyd liner Columbus, which was attempting to reach German waters. A British destroyer, the HMS Hyperion, found the Columbus and radioed the Tuscaloosa to take aboard the 577 Germans who had abandoned the liner, following its scuttling by the ship's captain. The Tuscaloosa disembarked the survivors at Ellis Island, New York, on December 20.

The Tuscaloosa remained in the Atlantic after the December 7, 1941, Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor, Hawaii, and subsequent U.S. entry into the war. Between April and September 1942, the cruiser worked with the British Home Fleet, based at Scapa Flow, Scotland, in the waters between Iceland and the northern Soviet Union and helped protect convoys of American merchant ships to Britain and the Soviet Union. In November 1942, the ship joined the Allied fleet that provided fire support for American forces invading French Morocco during Operation Torch, the U.S. and British invasion of North Africa. During the Naval Battle of Casablanca, November 7-8, the Tuscaloosa shelled Vichy French shore batteries and warships, including the battleship Jean Bart and evaded several submarine torpedoes. The Tuscaloosa spent much of 1943 and the first part of 1944 on convoy, patrol, and training duties in the North Atlantic and supported naval operations along the Norwegian coast. From May through June 1943, it joined other American warships, including the battleship USS Alabama, and the British Home Fleet in attempt to draw out the Tirpitz, which the German Navy had relocated to the fjords of northern Norway. However, the Tirpitz remained in seclusion and only fired her guns at enemy targets during a September 1943 raid on British shore facilities at Spitzbergen.

After Japan surrendered on August 15, 1945, the Tuscaloosa participated in occupation operations along the coasts of China and Korea from late August until November 1945. The ship and crew earned seven battle stars for their service in World War II, never suffering any serious damage from enemy action. Between November 1945 and January 1946, the vessel transported servicemen from Pacific islands to Hawaii and the United States. In early February 1946, the veteran cruiser passed through the Panama Canal and sailed north to the Philadelphia Navy Yard, where it was decommissioned by the Navy on February 13, 1946. The Tuscaloosa remained in the Atlantic Reserve Fleet until March 1, 1959, when the Navy struck the vessel from the Navy Register and sold it for scrap on June 25, 1959, to the Boston Metals Company, Baltimore, Maryland. The ship's former mast is the centerpiece of the Tuscaloosa Veterans Memorial Park, which also features one of its five-inch guns.
Additional Resources
Friedman, Norman. U.S. Cruisers: An Illustrated Design History. Annapolis, Md.: Naval Institute Press, 1984.
Additional Resources
Friedman, Norman. U.S. Cruisers: An Illustrated Design History. Annapolis, Md.: Naval Institute Press, 1984.
Prendergast, Maurice, and Oscar Parkes. Jane's Fighting Ships 1946-47. London: S. Low, Marston, Ltd., 1947.
Sommeville, Keith Frazier, and Harriotte W. B. Smith. Ships of the United States Navy and Their Sponsors. 1924-1950. Annapolis, Md.: United States Naval Institute, 1952