USS Houston (CL-81); May 23rd 1944 - Underway For Combat Operations

May 23rd, 1944. The training was over. Drills would never be over. Gun firing drills, damage control drills, man overboard drills, abandon ship drills, ship maneuvering drills, communication drills, all were now built into the fabric of Houston's daily life. Underway for Majuro Atoll, in company with USS Vincennes and USS Miami, the other ships of cruiser division 14, two battleships, seven destroyers and a minelayer, Houston was on her way to join Admiral Raymond Spruance's Fifth Fleet.

Half a world away, allied naval and air forces in Great Britain were preparing to invade Europe. The objective in Europe was still secret, but in two weeks the greatest armada in history was scheduled to land troops on the unprotected beaches of Normandy.

Aboard Houston the ship settled into the routine for wartime steaming. Lookouts scanned the sea for hostile forces. Surface lookouts scanned in every direction, alert for periscopes, torpedoes, hostile surface ships. Air lookouts scanned from the horizon up. The ship was in Condition III, with one third of her guns manned and ready to go into action at a moment's notice, defending the ship while the entire crew went to battle stations. Below decks in the Combat Information Center, radarmen under supervision of the CIC Watch Officer, watched their radar scopes for indications of hostile air or surface contacts. The ship had no sonar of its own to detect submarines, so CIC personnel depended on radio reports from the seven destroyers escorting the force.  Steaming under radio silence, at least for long range radio transmissions, the force coordinated their actions by signal flags and flashing light communications in Morse code.

Crews of the ship's five-inch dual-purpose guns took turns drilling on "loading machines" that simulated operation of the guns. The guns used semi-fixed ammunition, with powder in 25-lb brass casings, and separate 54-lb projectiles. Though the system used machinery to hoist the ammunition, it was loaded by hand. A well-trained crew could fire 18 rounds per minute from each gun.

The fire rooms and engine rooms had their own drills. They exercised daily on responses to engineering casualties, which might result from either normal operations or from battle damage.

There was little time for relaxation.