USS Lake Erie CG 70 – History of the U.S. Navy's Aegis Guided Missile Cruiser & Navy Decals

USS Lake Erie CG 70 – History, Service Record & Navy Decals

The USS Lake Erie (CG-70) was the twenty-fourth ship of the Ticonderoga class of Aegis guided missile cruisers, serving the Pacific Fleet through more than two decades of distinguished active service — including one of the most remarkable single combat firings in the history of the United States Navy. Named for the Battle of Lake Erie — fought on September 10, 1813, on the waters of Lake Erie near Put-in-Bay, Ohio — one of the most decisive American naval victories of the War of 1812, the engagement in which Master Commandant Oliver Hazard Perry secured American control of Lake Erie, enabled the recapture of Detroit and the defeat of the British-Indian alliance in the Northwest, and sent to General William Henry Harrison the most celebrated battle dispatch in American naval history: “We have met the enemy and they are ours.”

The Battle of Lake Erie

In the summer of 1813, control of Lake Erie was the strategic key to the entire Northwestern frontier of the United States. The British had seized Detroit and controlled Lake Erie since the disastrous American surrender of 1812, and as long as they controlled the lake, General Harrison's Army of the Northwest could not advance to retake Detroit and drive the British from American soil. The man given the task of wresting control of Lake Erie from the British was 27-year-old Master Commandant Oliver Hazard Perry — who arrived at Presque Isle (present-day Erie, Pennsylvania) in March 1813 to find he had almost nothing: a small, incomplete squadron, barely trained crews, and a shipbuilding program that had to be completed before he could fight.

Over the following months, Perry oversaw the construction and fitting out of his Lake Erie squadron — a remarkable feat of frontier logistics that produced two brigs, USS Lawrence and USS Niagara, along with several smaller vessels. He recruited his crews from wherever he could find them — including soldiers, frontier riflemen, and any sailor he could obtain. On September 10, 1813, Perry sailed out to meet the British Lake Erie Squadron under Commander Robert Barclay in the waters near Put-in-Bay on South Bass Island.

The battle began with Perry in his flagship Lawrence bearing the burden of the British fire while his second vessel Niagara, under Master Commandant Jesse Elliott, hung back from the action. Lawrence was devastated — four out of five of her crew killed or wounded, every gun dismounted, the ship a floating wreck. Rather than surrendering, Perry made one of the most celebrated acts of personal courage in American naval history: he transferred his flag from the wrecked Lawrence to the undamaged Niagara by rowboat, crossing through the British fire in an open boat, then sailed Niagara directly through the British line — breaking it in two and delivering devastating broadsides at point-blank range. The entire British squadron surrendered. Perry's dispatch to General Harrison was brief and perfect: “Dear General: We have met the enemy and they are ours—two ships, two brigs, one schooner and one sloop. Yours with great respect and esteem, O.H. Perry.”

The consequences were immediate and decisive. With Lake Erie in American hands, Harrison's army crossed the lake, recaptured Detroit, and pursued the retreating British and their Shawnee allies into Upper Canada, where at the Battle of the Thames on October 5, 1813, Harrison's forces defeated the British-Indian coalition and killed the great Shawnee chief Tecumseh — ending forever the British-Indian alliance that had threatened the entire American Northwest. Perry's 10 minutes of crisis, his rowboat transfer under fire, and his final victorious broadside had secured the American frontier. USS Lake Erie carried that legacy of personal courage, decisive action, and strategic consequence throughout her Pacific Fleet career.

Keel, Launch & Commissioning

Lake Erie's keel was laid down on February 6, 1989, at the Bath Iron Works in Bath, Maine. She was launched on July 13, 1990, and commissioned into the U.S. Navy on July 24, 1993, as the twenty-fourth ship of the Ticonderoga class under hull designation CG-70.

Class & Design

USS Lake Erie 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.

Operation Burnt Frost – Shooting Down USA-193, February 2008

USS Lake Erie's most historically singular achievement came on February 20, 2008, when she accomplished something no U.S. Navy warship had ever done before: she fired a single SM-3 Standard Missile and destroyed a failing U.S. intelligence satellite — USA-193 — in low Earth orbit, approximately 247 kilometers (153 miles) above the Pacific Ocean.

USA-193, a National Reconnaissance Office satellite launched in December 2006, had failed shortly after reaching orbit and was decaying toward an uncontrolled reentry. U.S. government officials determined that the satellite's full fuel tank of approximately 1,000 pounds of toxic hydrazine propellant posed a potential public health risk if the tank survived reentry intact and impacted in a populated area. President George W. Bush authorized the Navy to attempt an intercept using the Aegis Ballistic Missile Defense system — a mission called Operation Burnt Frost.

The technical challenge was extraordinary. USS Lake Erie had to fire an SM-3 missile — designed to intercept ballistic missiles in the exoatmosphere — at a satellite traveling at approximately 17,000 miles per hour in low Earth orbit, in a firing window that lasted only a few seconds as the satellite passed overhead. The intercept had to occur while the satellite was still in space, before it entered the atmosphere where the window would close. On February 20, 2008, Lake Erie fired her SM-3 and achieved a direct hit — destroying USA-193 and its hydrazine tank in a debris cloud that burned up on reentry, the mission accomplished perfectly. It was the first time a U.S. Navy surface ship had destroyed an object in space, and it demonstrated that the Aegis Ballistic Missile Defense system had achieved a capability — anti-satellite warfare — with profound strategic implications far beyond the system's original ballistic missile defense mission.

Pacific Fleet Career & Ballistic Missile Defense

Homeported at Pearl Harbor, Hawaii, USS Lake Erie served as one of the Navy's primary Aegis Ballistic Missile Defense (BMD) test and development platforms throughout her career, participating in numerous SM-3 intercept tests in the waters of the Pacific Missile Range Facility off Hawaii that contributed to the development and refinement of the Navy's BMD capability. Her role as a BMD test ship made her one of the most technically sophisticated and operationally significant surface combatants in the Navy, at the forefront of one of the most consequential expansions of American naval capability since the introduction of the Tomahawk cruise missile.

USS Lake Erie also deployed to the Western Pacific and participated in operations supporting American security commitments across the Asia-Pacific theater throughout her career, maintaining the full-spectrum combat capability of a Ticonderoga-class cruiser while simultaneously advancing the Navy's most cutting-edge missile defense technologies.

Decommissioning

USS Lake Erie was decommissioned on May 15, 2015, after nearly 22 years of commissioned service — a career that combined traditional Pacific Fleet cruiser operations with pioneering Aegis BMD development and the singular achievement of Operation Burnt Frost, the first destruction of a satellite by a U.S. Navy surface combatant.

Legacy

For the sailors who served aboard Lake Erie — the Aegis system operators, SM-3 technicians, ballistic missile defense specialists, and surface warfare professionals who kept this Pacific Fleet cruiser at the absolute cutting edge of American naval technology through nearly 22 years of service — she represents one of the most technically distinguished careers in the history of the Ticonderoga class. Named for Perry's battle where personal courage under devastating fire and one bold rowboat crossing under fire turned near-defeat into complete victory, USS Lake Erie matched that legacy of decisive, history-making action with a single SM-3 firing on February 20, 2008, that destroyed a satellite in low Earth orbit and announced to the world that American Aegis naval power had reached into space.

Shop USS Lake Erie CG 70 Navy Gifts & Decals

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