CINCINANTI

 The past two Sundays I have given you a little info about the first two U.S. Navy Ships with the name USS Cincinnati. Now comes the third.  

Numbered the CL-6 and christened USS Cincinnati; it was a light cruiser commissioned in 1924.  It served through World War II and then was decommissioned in 1946.  

She served with both the Atlantic and Pacific fleets before the war broke out.  It then became part of what President Roosevelt called the Neutrality Patrol.  He had set up a zone and warned all nations to respect that area.  This fleet of naval and air assets patrolled the whole area surrounding the Americas on both the East and West coasts.  The whole set-up was a sham.  The US was escorting Allied ships through the neutrality zone and would defend them against any ship trying to engage them.  There also was a "shoot now, ask questions later" order for all German subs sighted.

USS Cincinnati had been sailing out of Pearl Harbor just prior to our entry in the War but was reassigned to the Atlantic Fleet before the Japanese attack.  She spent the early part of the war escorting goods and troops to Europe and patrolling the Atlantic shipping lanes for enemy vessels.  It was called in to support the Allied invasion of the South of France in August 1944.  

After decommissioning, she was scraped and her bell sent here.  It still rests in the lobby of the Main Branch of the  Cincinnati Public Library.