USS Cape St George CG 71 – History of the U.S. Navy's Aegis Guided Missile Cruiser & Navy Decals

USS Cape St George CG 71 – History, Service Record & Navy Decals

The USS Cape St George (CG-71) was the twenty-fifth ship of the Ticonderoga class of Aegis guided missile cruisers, serving the Atlantic Fleet through more than two decades of distinguished active service. Named for the Battle of Cape St. George — fought on November 25, 1943, in the waters between Buka Island and Cape St. George off the southern tip of New Ireland in the Solomon Islands — one of the most brilliantly executed American destroyer actions of the entire Pacific War, the battle that cemented the legend of Captain Arleigh “31-Knot” Burke as the finest destroyer commander in the United States Navy and one of the greatest surface warfare officers in American naval history.

The Battle of Cape St. George

By November 1943, the grinding Solomons campaign — which had begun with the desperate battles of Guadalcanal — had pushed American forces northward through the island chain toward Rabaul, Japan's great Pacific fortress. The Japanese were fighting back with their famous “Tokyo Express” — high-speed destroyer runs down “The Slot” through the Solomon Islands, delivering supplies and reinforcements to Japanese garrisons at night, exploiting their destroyers' superior torpedo armament and night fighting skill. American destroyer forces had been learning, painfully, how to counter this threat.

Captain Arleigh Burke, commanding Destroyer Squadron 23 — the “Little Beavers” — had earned his nickname “31-Knot Burke” from a famous signal exchange in which he had promised Admiral Halsey he could make a rendezvous by driving his destroyers at 31 knots, a pace that strained every rivet in his ships. On the night of November 24–25, 1943, Burke received intelligence that a Japanese destroyer force was running a supply mission to Buka Island. He drove his five destroyers to intercept.

Burke's tactical handling of the ensuing battle was masterly. Using radar to gain the initiative — the technological advantage the U.S. Navy had finally learned to exploit after the costly night battles of Guadalcanal — Burke's squadron detected the Japanese before being detected, fired a spread of torpedoes that sank one Japanese destroyer immediately, and then maneuvered his ships in a running night battle that lasted several hours. When the fight was over, Burke had sunk three Japanese destroyers — Onami, Makinami, and Yugiri — and damaged a fourth, without losing a single American ship or suffering significant casualties. It was the kind of clean, decisive, professionally flawless victory that the U.S. Navy had been unable to achieve in the brutal night surface battles of the Guadalcanal campaign, and it announced that American destroyer forces had finally mastered the art of night surface warfare that the Japanese had previously dominated.

Burke went on to become Chief of Naval Operations — serving three terms from 1955 to 1961, the longest tenure in CNO history — and the Navy's most celebrated post-war naval officer. The Arleigh Burke class of guided missile destroyers, the backbone of the modern U.S. Navy surface fleet, was named in his honor. USS Cape St George carried the legacy of Burke's masterpiece at Cape St. George throughout her Atlantic Fleet career, her Aegis combat system the direct technological descendant of the radar-guided night warfare that Burke had used to such devastating effect in November 1943.

Keel, Launch & Commissioning

Cape St George's keel was laid down on November 19, 1990, at the Bath Iron Works in Bath, Maine. She was launched on January 28, 1992, and commissioned into the U.S. Navy on June 12, 1993, as the twenty-fifth ship of the Ticonderoga class under hull designation CG-71.

Class & Design

USS Cape St George was one of 27 Ticonderoga-class Aegis guided missile cruisers, equipped with the Mk 41 Vertical Launch System (VLS) carrying a mixed load of Standard Missiles, Tomahawk cruise missiles, and ASROC across 122 cells. At approximately 567 feet in length and displacing approximately 9,600 tons fully loaded, she also carried two 5-inch/54 caliber guns, Harpoon anti-ship missiles, two Phalanx close-in weapon systems, and torpedo tubes, paired with the full AN/SPY-1 Aegis radar and combat system — herself a supreme expression of the radar-guided surface warfare excellence that Burke had pioneered at Cape St. George six decades earlier.

Atlantic Fleet Career – Operation Iraqi Freedom & War on Terror

Commissioned in June 1993, USS Cape St George was assigned to the Atlantic Fleet, homeported at Norfolk, Virginia, and deployed extensively to the Mediterranean with the Sixth Fleet and to the Persian Gulf throughout her career. She participated in Operation Iraqi Freedom in March 2003, firing Tomahawk cruise missiles against Iraqi targets in the Coalition's opening precision strike campaign — adding Gulf War combat distinction to a career defined by Atlantic Fleet Mediterranean deployments.

USS Cape St George is also notably remembered for an incident on March 13, 2003, in the eastern Mediterranean, when she engaged two Turkish fishing vessels that approached her high-security operating area at speed despite warning signals — firing warning shots and ultimately engaging one vessel with her deck gun. The incident, which occurred in the tense days immediately before the launch of Operation Iraqi Freedom, highlighted the real-world force protection challenges facing American warships operating in contested and politically sensitive waters during wartime operations.

Following Iraqi Freedom, USS Cape St George continued her Atlantic Fleet career through the War on Terror, conducting Mediterranean deployments with the Sixth Fleet, escorting carrier strike groups, and maintaining the American forward naval presence across the Mediterranean that was the foundation of American strategic commitments through the post-Cold War era's most demanding years.

Decommissioning

USS Cape St George was decommissioned on August 24, 2012, after nearly 19 years of commissioned service — a career spanning from the post-Cold War era through Operation Iraqi Freedom and the War on Terror, with Atlantic Fleet Mediterranean deployments that kept her at the operational center of American naval power in the world's most strategically contested body of water.

Legacy

For the sailors who served aboard Cape St George — the Aegis system operators, VLS technicians, combat systems specialists, and surface warfare professionals who kept this Atlantic Fleet cruiser ready and lethal through nearly 19 years of service — she represents a career of exceptional distinction. Named for Arleigh Burke's masterpiece of radar-guided night surface warfare — three Japanese destroyers sunk without loss in one of the Pacific War's most flawlessly executed destroyer actions — USS Cape St George embodied the direct technological and tactical lineage from Burke's radar-guided Little Beavers to the Aegis combat system that made her the most capable air defense and surface warfare platform of her era.

Shop USS Cape St George CG 71 Navy Gifts & Decals

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