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USS Boston (CA-69, later CAG-1), 1943-1975

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USS Boston, a 13,600 ton Baltimore class heavy cruiser built at Quincy, Massachusetts, was commissioned at the end of June 1943. Following several months of shakedown and training, the new ship transited the Panama Canal to the Pacific. She arrived at Pearl Harbor, Hawaii, late in the year and in January and February 1944 took part in the campaign to seize some of the Marshall Islands. Primarily assigned to escort aircraft carriers, as she generally was throughout the rest of the conflict, Boston also used her eight-inch guns in the Eniwetok pre-invasion bombardment. During the next several months, the cruiser participated in raids throughout the Central Pacific and supported landings in Northwestern New Guinea.

Boston continued to escort the fast carriers for the last half of 1944 and into 1945, during which time the War moved westward through the Marianas and Palaus to recapture the Philippines, as well as supress Japanese power in the Ryukyus, Formosa, on the Asian mainland, and in the Japanese Home Islands. She participated in 1944's two major fleet actions, the Battle of the Philippine Sea in June and the Battle of Leyte Gulf in October. Also in October, as the Task Force 38 raided Formosa, Boston helped tow the torpedoed light cruiser Houston (CL-81) out of harm's way.

Overhauled in California during the Spring of 1945, Boston returned to the war zone in time to join in the final weeks of attacks on Japan. In addition to her accustomed role as a carrier escort, on 9 August she also shelled Kaimaishi, on the Japanese main island of Honshu. Once the enemy had surrendered, Boston stayed in the Western Pacific supporting occupation efforts until late February 1946. She was inactivated after her return to the United States, formally decommissioning at Bremerton, Washington, in late October 1946. Early in January 1952, following more than five years in the Pacific Reserve Fleet, Boston was reclassified as a guided-missile heavy cruiser, receiving the new designation CAG-1. In February she began a long tow from the West Coast to Camden, New Jersey, where she began more than three years of modernization work.

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