NE 1342C Savannah

New 1/1250 scale waterline model of the American light cruiser Savannah by Neptun (NE 1342C) as in 1944.

USS Savannah (CL-42) was a light cruiser of the Brooklyn class that served in World War II in the Atlantic and Mediterranean theaters of operation. The Savannah conducted Neutrality Patrols (1941) and wartime patrols in the Atlantic and Caribbean (1942), and supported the invasion of French North Africa in Operation Torch (November 1942). She sought German-supporting blockade runners off the east coast of South America (1943), and supported the Allied landings on Sicily and at Salerno (1943).

Off Salerno on 11 September 1943, a German radio-controlled Fritz X glide-bomb caused extensive casualties aboard and serious damage to the Savannah, requiring emergency repairs in Malta and permanent repairs at the Philadelphia Naval Shipyard. After repairs and upgrades, she served in the task force that carried President Roosevelt to the Yalta Conference (1945). Postwar the USS Savannah became the flagship of a midshipmen's training squadron. She was placed in commission in reserve on 22 April 1946, and was finally decommissioned on 3 February 1947. As one of two Brooklyn-class cruisers to be modernized with twin 5in/38 guns and Mark 37 directors, Savannah was retained by the USN when most of her surviving sister ships were sold to South American navies. Her name was struck from the Naval Vessel Register on 1 March 1959, and she was sold for scrapping on 25 January 1966 to the Bethlehem Steel Company.