USS Quincy, a 9375-ton New Orleans class heavy cruiser, was built at Quincy, Massachusetts. Commissioned in June 1936, she soon was sent to the western Mediterranean Sea for three months to protect American interests during the Spanish Civil War. In April 1937, Quincy passed through the Panama Canal to begin operations in the Pacific. She returned to the Atlantic in January 1939 and in February took part in Fleet Problem XX in the Caribbean. A good will cruise in South American waters followed in April-June 1939.

With the outbreak of World War II in Europe in early September 1939, Quincy began Neutrality Patrol activities in the western Atlantic area. She revisited South America during mid-1940 and over the next year participated in Naval Reserve training voyages, more Neutrality enforcement patrols and Caribbean amphibous warfare exercises. Beginning in July 1941, the Quincy cruised between the Atlantic coast and Iceland, marking an extension of U.S. "short of war" operations to the middle of the North Atlantic. Later in the year, she escorted a convoy from South Africa to Trinadad. These escort and patrol duties continued after the United States entered the war in December 1941.

Following an overhaul, Quincy transferred to the Pacific Fleet in June 1942. The next month, she was sent to New Zealand, where she joined the forces preparing for the invasion of the southern Solomon Islands. On 7 August 1942, Quincy bombarded Japanese installations on Guadalcanal in support of the U.S. Marine Corps landing there. During the night of 8-9 August, she was one of three heavy cruisers stationed in the northern approaches to the invasion zone and was sunk there by a force of Japanese cruisers in the disastrous Battle of Savo Island in the early morning darkness of 9 August 1942.

Fifty years later, in August 1992, Quincy's wreck was located and examined on the sea floor of what had come to be called "Iron Bottom Sound". She lies upright in some 3000 feet of water, with her bow broken off immediately in front of her forward eight-inch gun turrets, both of which are trained out to starboard. The ship's shell-riddled forward superstructure, shattered left gun of Turret # 2, destroyed aircraft hangar and collapsed after deck are indications of the battering she received from Japanese weapons during her final moments on the surface and from the crushing force of the deep sea after she sank.