Rule 5 Warships – USS St. Louis

Let’s meet one of the Eagle Union’s most popular light cruisers, the USS St. Louis! The eighth of nine Brooklyn-class vessels, she and her sister Helena are sometimes considered a separate sub-class thanks to major differences in their powerplant and secondary armaments.

As light cruisers go, the Brooklyn-class was pretty heavily armed and armored. Built as a response to Japan’s construction of the Mogami-class cruisers, they were designed with the theory that more 6in (152mm) cannons could have a sufficiently greater volume of fire to compensate for the loss of mass from not using 8in guns. Originally they were planned to have twelve main cannons in four turrets, but in response to the previously mentioned Mogami-class being armed with fifteen 6in cannons, the United States said “no, our new cruiser needs to at least match that!” So the Brooklyn-class would have fifteen 6in guns in five triple turrets. Three fore, and two aft.

St. Louis would be launched on April 15^th, 1938, and officially commissioned a year later on May 19^th, 1939. She would participate in the United States’ Neutrality Patrols until December 7^th, 1941. By that time she had joined the Pacific Fleet. On December 7^th, she was parked in Pearl Harbor, but sustained no damage. At that point, St. Louis went to war.

She would serve in nearly every major Pacific theatre event during the war. From the Aleutian islands, to the Solomons, to Kula Gulf, Kolombangara, Marianas, Philippines, and Okinawa, she would see them all. By the end of the war, she earned eleven battle stars, had been hit and repaired several times, but kept coming back.

After WWII, she would join the reserve fleet until the early 1950s, at which point she would receive a 2^nd life as the Almirante Tamandaré, a major part of the Brazilian Navy. She would serve as the fleet flagship until 1976. Not too bad for a “light cruiser” launched at a time when artillery spotting was still done with biplane seaplanes launched by catapult.

For this blog, we first glimpsed her a couple of weeks ago when talking about Belfast. In Azur Lane, St. Louis (not to be confused with blueprint ship Saint Louis) shows up in the background of a lot of photos and stories. She’s one of the more popular cosplay choices, and has some great alternate costume options.