World War II Database

Contributor: C. Peter Chen

ww2dbaseUSS Miami entered service in Dec 1943 and held her shakedown cruise in the Caribbean Sea. After a period of training along the east coast of the United States, she sailed for the Pacific Ocean alongside of her sister ships Vincennes and Houston, arriving at the Pearl Harbor, US Territory of Hawaii in May 1944. In Jul and Aug, She supported actions in the Mariana Islands and Bonin Islands during the American campaign to capture the Mariana Islands, mainly in the role of escorting aircraft carriers. In Sep, she escorted carriers and their aircraft hit Japanese positions on Peleliu and Angaur of the Palau Islands and in the Philippine Islands, in indirect support of the Palau campaign; her scout planes rescued downed US airmen on four occasions during this action. In Oct, she operated off the Okinawa, Japan and the Philippine Islands. During the Leyte Gulf campaign, the aircraft of the carriers she escorted achieved a significant vicotry in the Battle of the Sibuyan Sea on 24 Oct, accompanied the carriers northward as the Americans were baited away from the main action off Samar on the following day, and she, joined by other warships, sank Japanese destroyer Nowaki near the San Bernardino Strait. In Dec 1944, she survived Typhoon Cobra in the Philippine Sea, but suffered the loss of one seaplane and minor damage to the hull; on 19 Dec, the day after the most violent day of the typhoon, she helped rescue survivors of lost ships. In Jan 1945, she escorted carriers while their aircraft hit Japanese positions in Taiwan, Luzon of Philippine Islands, French Indochina, southern China, and Hong Kong. In early Feb, she operated close to Tokyo, Japan while the carrier aircraft struck targets near the Japanese capital. In Mar and Apr 1945, she operated east of Okinawa, Japan, serving in similar roles alongside carriers, facing very frequent Japanese air threats. She departed from the front lines in May for a scheduled overhaul in San Francisco, California, United States, where she would be when the war ended. She returned to the Ryukyu Islands in Sep, accepting the surrender of a Japanese garrison of a small Ryukyu island north of Okinawa. Returning to the United States in Dec 1945, she would serve off California until her decommissioning in 1947. She remained in the Pacific Reserve Fleet until she was scrapped in 1962.

Light Cruiser Miami (CL-89) Interactive Map

Photographs

Miami Operational Timeline

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6.  David Stubblebine says:
1 May 2018 10:43:23 PM

Darryl Randolph (above):
USS Miami Muster Rolls show Seaman 2nd-class (later Seaman 1st-class) Howard Ray Randolph, service number 672 14 29, served aboard from mid-1945 (just before war’s end) to sometime in 1946 and possibly beyond. These records are a little unclear and incomplete. The best source of information on his service will be his service record, which you can request a copy of from the National Archives. See https://ww2db.com/faq/#3.