Helena was named for the city in Montana. This is the light cruiser CL-50, not a later ship of that name. The New York Navy Yard laid her down on 9 December 1936, launched her on 27 August 1938, and commissioned her on 18 September 1939, with Captain Max B. Demott in command. She and St. Louis were the improved Brooklyns. Fifteen 6-inch guns stood in five triple turrets. The boiler rooms and the engine rooms were set in an alternating line, so that one hit would not take all the steam at once.
On 7 December 1941 she was moored at 1010 Dock at Pearl Harbor, in the berth usually kept for the battleship Pennsylvania. The minelayer Oglala lay outboard of her. A torpedo passed under Oglala and hit Helena on the starboard side, almost amidships. One engine room and one boiler room flooded. Men were killed. She stayed afloat. The repairs began at Pearl Harbor and were finished at Mare Island.
On 15 September 1942 a Japanese submarine torpedoed the carrier Wasp. Helena was with that force. She took nearly 400 of Wasp's men aboard and carried them to Espiritu Santo. Other ships picked up more of the crew. On the night of 11 October she fought at Cape Esperance. Her radar made the first contact, and she opened fire. Japanese ships were sunk that night. Those sinkings are not credited to Helena alone.
On the night of 13 November 1942 she was in Callaghan's column off Guadalcanal, between Portland and Juneau. The lines ran together in the dark. She took minor damage. One man was killed. At about 0204 her 6-inch guns hit the destroyer Amatsukaze. Tameichi Hara, Amatsukaze's captain, later said the cruiser was Helena. The hits knocked out Amatsukaze's guns, and the steering was out. Hara steered her by hand for hundreds of miles, and she made Truk. She was not sunk. Asagumo, Murasame, and Samidare then drew Helena's fire.
She was not at Tassafaronga. That fight came a month later, and she was not in it. Hara, who had Amatsukaze on 13 November, afterward commanded Destroyer Division 27, which included Shigure. He was not Shigure's captain, and that duty was not at Tassafaronga.
Through the early summer of 1943 she bombarded Japanese positions around New Georgia. On the night of 4 July she went into Kula Gulf with the ships covering the landing at Rice Anchorage and fired on the shore. Before dawn on 6 July she was in the cruiser line: Honolulu, Helena, and St. Louis. Honolulu flew Rear Admiral Ainsworth's flag. Nicholas and O'Bannon were ahead. Jenkins and Radford were astern. The American guns sank the Japanese flagship Niizuki, and Rear Admiral Akiyama was lost with her. That sinking is not credited to one ship. Helena's own gun flashes lit her up. Suzukaze and Tanikaze launched the torpedoes. Three of them hit her. The hits are not pinned to one of those two destroyers. The first tore her bow off. She broke up and sank. Captain Charles P. Cecil had the ship. He survived.
Nicholas and Radford stayed. O'Bannon was not a rescue ship that night. The two destroyers broke off the rescue three times to fight. Nicholas took 291 men aboard. Together they got more than 700 off. A later group of survivors reached Vella Lavella and was brought out on 16 July. Nicholas was only in the covering force for that pickup, not the ship that took the men off the island.
She was the first ship to receive the Navy Unit Commendation. The citation named Cape Esperance, the night action of 13 November, and Kula Gulf.
