Building
Vincennes was the second Navy ship named for the Indiana town, site of George Rogers Clark's 1779 victory. Bethlehem's Fore River plant at Quincy, Massachusetts, laid her down on 2 January 1934. She was launched on 21 May 1936, sponsored by Miss Harriet Virginia Kimmell, daughter of Mayor Joseph Kimmell of Vincennes, and commissioned on 24 February 1937, Captain Burton H. Green in command. Like Quincy, she was an improved New Orleans-class treaty cruiser with nine 8-inch guns on 10,000 tons. She was classed as a light cruiser at first because of her thin armor and reclassified as a heavy cruiser because of her guns.
Between the wars and the Atlantic
She left Boston on 19 April 1937 for a shakedown cruise to Stockholm, Helsinki, Le Havre and Portsmouth. In January 1938 she joined Cruiser Division 7 at San Diego. After an overhaul at Mare Island she returned east with Quincy, Tuscaloosa and San Francisco and reached Hampton Roads on 13 June 1939. When Germany invaded Poland on 1 September 1939 she was at anchor off Tompkinsville, New York. Through the spring of 1940 she patrolled the East Coast, the Caribbean and the Yucatán Channel on Neutrality Patrol. In June 1940 she was held in port for three days when her code machine failed, until an enlisted man, Lewis Lee Edwards, cleaned the corroded contacts with an emery board. In 1941 she exercised at Guantánamo and Culebra and then escorted a convoy to Cape Town, arriving on 9 December 1941. She had been fighting heavy seas on the way when the news came of Pearl Harbor. She left South Africa on 16 December by way of Trinidad and reached Norfolk on 4 January 1942.
Tokyo and Midway
She was fitted out for war at New York and screened Hornet's shakedown. As part of Task Force 18 she sailed from San Francisco with Hornet on 2 April 1942, met Enterprise's Task Force 16, and on 18 April watched all 16 of Doolittle's heavily loaded B-25s take off for Tokyo. The force was back at Pearl Harbor on 25 April. She sailed again on 29 May and by 4 June was steaming north of Midway. When Hiryū's torpedo planes attacked Yorktown that afternoon, Vincennes combed torpedo tracks and shot down a "Kate" 150 yards off her port bow. Yorktown was crippled and was sunk with Hammann by I-168 on 6 June. After the battle she took aboard Ensign George Gay, the only survivor of the 30 men of Hornet's Torpedo Squadron 8.
Guadalcanal and Savo Island
She covered the Guadalcanal and Tulagi landings on 7 August 1942. The next afternoon 27 G4M "Betty" torpedo bombers attacked the transports. Vincennes dodged a torpedo that passed under her stern and a bomb that fell off her port quarter, while Jarvis nearby took a fatal hit. That night Captain Frederick L. Riefkohl commanded the northern cruiser group of Vincennes, Quincy and Astoria. Expecting an air attack in the morning, he went to his sea cabin about midnight after being on the bridge since 04:45.
Just after 01:55 on 9 August, Japanese searchlights lit up Vincennes. She fired at them with her main battery, and Riefkohl came to the bridge, turned to port and called for more speed. Mikawa's first salvo hit her bridge, carpenter shop, Battle II and radio trunks. More hits followed while she was still making 19.5 knots, and one knocked her after antiaircraft director overboard. At 02:00 she heeled to starboard to dodge, and one or two Long Lance torpedoes tore into her No. 4 fireroom. Burning and listing, she was ordered abandoned at 02:30. In Riefkohl's words, "the magnificent Vincennes … rolled over and then sank at about 0250, 9 August 1942, about 2½ miles east of Savo Island." Three hundred twenty-two of her crew were killed. She earned two battle stars.
The wreck
Her wreck was found in early 2015 during a sonar mapping survey of Ironbottom Sound led by Paul Allen.
Sources
Wikipedia, "USS Vincennes (CA-44)" (citing DANFS; Riefkohl's report).
NHHC/DANFS, "Vincennes II."