USS Harry E. Yarnell CG 17 – History of the U.S. Navy's Guided Missile Cruiser & Navy Decals

USS Harry E. Yarnell CG 17 – History, Service Record & Navy Decals

The USS Harry E. Yarnell (CG-17) was the second ship of the Leahy class of guided missile cruisers — the U.S. Navy's first purpose-built guided missile cruiser class — serving the Atlantic Fleet through three decades of Cold War service. Named for Admiral Harry Ervin Yarnell, USN — one of the most visionary and prophetic naval officers in American history, a pioneer of naval aviation and carrier warfare whose strategic insight was so far ahead of its time that he predicted — and demonstrated — the exact method by which Japan would attack Pearl Harbor, more than nine years before it happened.

In February 1932, Admiral Yarnell commanded the carrier force “attacking” Pearl Harbor during the annual Fleet Problem XIII war games. On a Sunday morning — deliberately chosen because American forces would be at reduced readiness — Yarnell launched 152 aircraft from his carriers Saratoga and Lexington in a surprise dawn strike from the northwest, achieving complete tactical surprise and, by the umpires’ judgment, devastating the defending forces. The attack was strikingly similar in concept, execution, and timing to the Japanese attack that would follow on December 7, 1941 — a Sunday morning, a dawn strike from carriers to the northwest, complete surprise. Yarnell’s 1932 demonstration proved conclusively that carriers, not battleships, were the future of naval power and that Pearl Harbor was vulnerable to exactly the kind of attack that Japan would execute nine years later.

Tragically, the lessons of Yarnell’s 1932 demonstration were largely dismissed by the Navy’s battleship-oriented establishment, which ruled the exercise results invalid on technical grounds. The Japanese Navy, however, studied Yarnell’s attack closely and incorporated its lessons into their planning. Admiral Yarnell’s prophetic vision, vindicated in the most terrible way possible on December 7, 1941, stands as one of the most remarkable examples of strategic foresight in the history of naval warfare — and USS Harry E. Yarnell carried that legacy of visionary naval thinking throughout her Cold War career.

Keel, Launch & Commissioning

Harry E. Yarnell’s keel was laid down on June 31, 1960, at the Bath Iron Works in Bath, Maine. She was launched on December 9, 1961, and commissioned into the U.S. Navy on February 2, 1963, as the second ship of the Leahy class under hull designation CG-17 (originally designated DLG-17, reclassified as CG-17 in 1975).

Class & Design

USS Harry E. Yarnell was one of nine Leahy-class guided missile cruisers — the Navy’s first purpose-built guided missile cruiser class, designed to provide area air defense for carrier strike groups. At approximately 533 feet in length and displacing approximately 8,200 tons fully loaded, she carried the twin-arm Terrier surface-to-air missile systems fore and aft — earning the class nickname “Double-End Terrier ships” — along with the ASROC anti-submarine rocket system and torpedo tubes. Later upgrades replaced the original Terrier missiles with the more capable Standard Missile system and added Harpoon anti-ship missiles, keeping the class at the forefront of surface combatant capability throughout the Cold War.

Named for the admiral who had championed carrier warfare and demonstrated the vulnerability of Pearl Harbor in 1932, it was profoundly fitting that USS Harry E. Yarnell served her career as a carrier strike group escort — the living embodiment of the carrier-centric naval doctrine that her namesake had spent his career advocating.

Cold War Service

Commissioned in February 1963, USS Harry E. Yarnell was assigned to the Atlantic Fleet, where she served as an escort for carrier battle groups conducting Cold War forward presence and power projection operations throughout the Atlantic and Mediterranean. Over three decades of Cold War service, Yarnell participated in the full range of carrier battle group operations — providing air defense, anti-submarine warfare support, and surface warfare capability to the carrier strike groups that were the primary expression of American naval power throughout the Cold War.

The Atlantic Fleet’s carrier battle groups that Yarnell escorted were the Navy’s primary instrument for projecting American power into the Mediterranean — the most strategically contested body of water in the Cold War — and into the North Atlantic, where NATO’s ability to reinforce Europe depended on keeping the sea lanes open against the Soviet submarine threat. USS Harry E. Yarnell was a critical element of the combat power that made those missions possible through three decades of Cold War service.

Decommissioning

USS Harry E. Yarnell was decommissioned on February 28, 1994, after more than 31 years of commissioned service — a career spanning the complete arc of the Cold War from the Kennedy administration through its end, encompassing every major Cold War crisis and naval confrontation of that era.

Legacy

For the sailors who served aboard Harry E. Yarnell — the missile technicians, sonar operators, electronic warfare specialists, and surface warfare professionals who kept this Atlantic Fleet guided missile cruiser operational and ready through 31 years of Cold War service — she represents a career at the cutting edge of American naval technology and strategy. Named for the visionary admiral who predicted Pearl Harbor and championed carrier warfare against the battleship establishment’s resistance, USS Harry E. Yarnell served her entire career escorting the carriers whose dominance her namesake had foreseen — a perfect tribute to the prophetic genius of Admiral Harry E. Yarnell.

Shop USS Harry E. Yarnell CG 17 Navy Gifts & Decals

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