The Drive:
With USS Blue Ridge (LCC-19) recently coming out of a major upgrade and maintenance period, The War Zone ran a feature on the often misunderstood, half century old class of command and control ships. After posting the article we got a flood of email, comments, and instant messages from people who had served on the ships or visited them for a period of time during their careers in the military. We were told repeatedly how great the food was, how the ships’ abilities were far more limited and even neglected in decades past, and other interesting tidbits of information. Maybe the most interesting was about the class’s armament. It turns out the vessels were once equipped with an austere point air defense capability, one that is almost laughably incapable by today’s standards.
At its commissioning, USS Blue Ridge was outfitted with a pair of twin Mark 33 three inch guns mounted amidships. These rudimentary deck guns were quickly augmented by a pair of Mark 25 box launchers installed nearby. The Mark 25s housed early versions of the RIM-7 Sea Sparrow surface-to-air missile—which was adapted from the air-to-air missile of a similar name, specifically the AIM-7E.
