USS Augusta (CL/CA-31) was a of the United States Navy, notable for service as a headquarters ship during Operation Torch, Operation Overlord, and Operation Dragoon, and for her occasional use as a presidential flagship carrying both Franklin D. Roosevelt and Harry S. Truman under wartime conditions (including at the Atlantic Charter). She was named after Augusta, Georgia, Originally classified as a light cruiser, CL-31, because of her thin armor. Effective 1 July 1931, Augusta was redesignated a heavy cruiser, CA-31, because of her 8-inch guns in accordance with the provisions of the London Naval Treaty of 1930.
Service history
Damage to one of her turbines curtailed the ship's original shakedown cruise, but Augusta conducted abbreviated initial training during a cruise to Colón, Panama, and back, before she was assigned duty as flagship for Commander, Scouting Force, Vice Admiral Arthur L. Willard, on 21 May 1931. During the summer of 1931, she operated with the other warships of Scouting Force, carrying out tactical exercises off the New England coast. In September, Augusta moved south to Chesapeake Bay, where she joined her colleagues in their normal fall gunnery drills until mid-November, when the cruisers retired to their home ports. Augusta entered the Norfolk Navy Yard at that time.
Augusta remained at Shanghai until 30 April, when she sailed for her second visit to Japan, reaching Yokohama on 3 May 1935. The ship remained there for two weeks. Steaming thence to Kobe, and arriving there on 18 May for a week's sojourn, Augusta sailed for China on 25 May, and reached Nanjing, the Chinese capital, on the 29th. Ten days later Chinese planes bombed the American Dollar Line SS President Hoover off the mouth of the Huangpu, with one death and several wounded. American ships ceased calling at Shanghai as a result, and Admiral Yarnell's attempts to get a division of heavy cruisers to carry out the evacuation met resistance from President Franklin Delano Roosevelt.
Atlantic Fleet
Departing Mare Island on 11 April 1941, Augusta, her configuration altered and repainted, sailed for San Pedro, remaining there over 12 and 13 April. She transited the Panama Canal four days later, reporting for duty with the Atlantic Fleet on 17 April. Departing the Canal Zone on the 19th, the heavy cruiser arrived at Newport, R.I., on 23 April. Admiral Ernest J. King, now Commander in Chief, Atlantic Fleet, returned from Washington, D.C., on 2 May and broke his flag in Augusta. The cruiser remained at Newport, serving as the administrative CINCLANT flagship (although Admiral King journeyed to Washington again during this time), through most of May, until she sailed for Bermuda on the 24th of that month. Reaching her destination on the 26th, she remained there only until the 28th, at which time she sailed for Newport once more. On 10 June General Bradley and his staff left the heavy cruiser to establish headquarters ashore. Augusta was bombed at 0357 on 11 June, but escaped damage as the bomb exploded 800 yards (730 m) off her port beam. The following day, anchored as before off Omaha Beach, she fired eight 5 inch (127 mm) rounds at an enemy plane at 2343, driving it off. On 13 June at 0352 she sent 21 rounds of 5 inch (127 mm) at a German plane, and shot it down. Augusta drove off other aircraft and bombarded the shore with her heavy guns on 15 June, and provided antiaircraft defense to the forces off Normandy on 18 June. The next day, while underway to shift berths, she lost a man overboard when he was swept overboard by heavy seas.