page_title: USS Worcester (CL-144)
section_title: History
hierarchical_section_title: USS Worcester (CL-144) / History
caption_attribution_description: English: The U.S. Navy light cruiser USS Worcester (CL-144) underway, with her crew at quarters during Memorial Day services, 31 May 1952.
context_page_description: USS Worcester (CL-144), the second ship of that name in the United States Navy, was the lead ship of a class of light cruisers. Worcester was named after two previous ships of that name, honoring Worcester, Massachusetts.
context_section_description: Worcester was laid down on 29 January 1945 at Camden, New Jersey, by the New York Shipbuilding and Drydock Corp., and launched on 4 February 1947. Sponsored by Gloria Ann Sullivan, the daughter of Mayor F. G. Sullivan of Worcester, Massachusetts, she was commissioned at the Philadelphia Naval Shipyard on 26 June 1948, with Captain T. B. Dugan in command.
  Worcester, assigned to Cruiser Division (CruDiv) 10, spent the first year of her commissioned service completing her fitting out, conducting shakedown training off the eastern seaboard of the United States, and undergoing availability and type training. In the summer of 1949, she participated in her first large-scale training exercises in Guantanamo Bay and visited Kingston, Jamaica. Late in the summer, she sailed for the Mediterranean, departing Newport, Rhode Island, on 6 September 1949 and reaching Gibraltar 10 days later. She made her first deployment with the 6th Fleet in the ensuing months, visiting Malta; Bizerte, Tunisia; Golfe-Juan, France; Argostoli and Phaleron Bay, Greece; Iskenderum, Turkey; Trieste and Venice, Italy; and Gibraltar. During that 6th Fleet deployment, she engaged in exercises and maneuvers with fast carrier task forces, including the carrier Leyte and the heavy cruiser Des Moines. She returned to Norfolk, Virginia on 10 December.
  Worcester operated off the eastern seaboard, ranging from Newport to Norfolk and south to Puerto Rico, with visits in between to Philadelphia, before she began her second 6th Fleet deployment in the spring of 1950. She departed Norfolk on 3 May, arrived at Lisbon on 13 May, and entered the Mediterranean soon thereafter.
  In between her cycles of drills and exercises in the "Med," Worcester visited Augusta, Sicily; Bizerte; Genoa and La Spezia, Italy; and Golfe Juan, on the southern coast of France, before she put into Phaleron Bay on 20 July. However, she was there only a week before she received orders to sail for the Far East. While the light cruiser and her consorts had been operating in the Mediterranean, war had broken out in Korea on 25 June. Accordingly, Worcester departed Phaleron Bay on 27 July, in company with Destroyer Division (DesDiv) 21 composed of Fred T. Berry, Keppler, Norris, and McCaffery. Reaching Port Said, Egypt, on the morning of 29 July, Worcester transited the Suez Canal that afternoon.
  Reaching Colombo for provisions and fuel, Worcester and her escorts tarried there from 7 August to 9 August before pushing on toward the Malacca Strait. They then proceeded through the Bashi Channel to Buckner Bay, Okinawa, where they arrived on 19 August. En route, the American warships had been diverted through the Bashi Channel to be available to counter any invasion attempt by the communist Chinese of Formosa.
  After fueling from Navasota, Worcester departed Buckner Bay on 20 August and set a course for Keelung, Formosa, to join the Formosa Patrol.
  Joining that force on 21 August, Worcester remained at anchor at Keelung from 22 through 26 August. She got underway the following day to add her anti-aircraft defense to the screen of Task Force (TF) 77—the fast carrier task force consisting of Philippine Sea and Valley Forge, then operating in the Yellow Sea off the coast of Korea.
  On 28 August, the light cruiser—steaming in company with Norris—joined TF 77 and proceeded into the Yellow Sea for operations against enemy targets located in central and southwestern Korea. Each day in ensuing days, the carriers launched their strikes against North Korean ground targets while the screen provided protection in case of any attempts by the communist North Korean air forces to interrupt the operation. Worcester's helicopter also performed plane-guard duty, standing by in the air to rescue any ditched pilots from the waters nearby.
  On 4 September, Worcester's radar picked up an unidentified contact at 1331. The combat air patrol—four Vought F4U Corsairs from Valley Forge—soon reported the stranger as being a twin-engined bomber with a pointed nose, a single tailfin, and high inverted gull wings. It also bore red star marki
caption: USS Worcester underway on 31 May 1952
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