The Two USS Cowpens: A World War II Light Carrier and an Aegis Cruiser

The battle behind the name

At dawn on January 17, 1781, Americans under Brigadier General Daniel Morgan met British troops under Lieutenant Colonel Banastre Tarleton at a well-known pasture called the Cow Pens. In less than an hour the Americans had won. Many historians see the battle as the turning point of the Revolution's Southern Campaign: it gave the Americans the heart to keep fighting, and nine months later they won at Yorktown, the war's last major battle. Two Navy ships have carried its name.

CVL-25: the light carrier

The first USS Cowpens was an Independence-class light aircraft carrier of World War II. When her keel was laid on November 17, 1941, she was meant to be the light cruiser Huntington (CL-107) — but the Navy needed carriers more than cruisers. Meanwhile George Dean Martin, who owned a drugstore in Cowpens, South Carolina, had written to President Franklin D. Roosevelt suggesting a carrier be named for the nearby battle. Carriers then were named for battles, so she became CVL-25, USS Cowpens. Her crew called her the "Mighty Moo."

• First battle star: the strike on Wake Island, October 5–6, 1943. She earned eleven more and a Navy Unit Commendation by war's end.
• Typhoon: on December 18, 1944, a typhoon hit the ship and one crew member was lost. Bombs and aircraft broke loose and slid across the deck; the crew fought 100 mph winds and the ship's rolling to secure them, and their skill prevented major damage. After repairs at Ulithi from December 21, she was back at sea by the 30th for the Lingayen Gulf landings.
• The end of the war: in August 1945 she joined the final raids on Japan, flying photo-reconnaissance over airfields and finding and supplying prisoner-of-war camps. On August 27, 1945, she was the first light carrier in Tokyo Bay, and her crew watched the Japanese surrender signed aboard the USS Missouri.

In 22½ months of war in the Pacific, she:

She was decommissioned on January 13, 1947, reclassified as an aircraft transport (AVT-1) — a role she never served in — and sold for scrap in 1961. More: NavSource on CVL-25.

CG-63: the Aegis cruiser

The second USS Cowpens, the guided-missile cruiser CG-63, was launched on March 3, 1989, at Bath Iron Works in Bath, Maine, and commissioned in Charleston, South Carolina, on March 9, 1991 — the seventeenth Aegis cruiser of the Ticonderoga class. She too is the "Mighty Moo," and her crew call themselves "the Herd."

• Against air threats: the Mark 41 Vertical Launching System, SPY-1B phased-array radar and Phalanx Close-In Weapon System.
• Against submarines: a LAMPS Mark III SH-60B helicopter, the AN/SQR-19 towed array sonar and the AN/SQR-53B hull sonar.
• Against surface ships: Tomahawk and Harpoon cruise missiles, and two 5-inch, 54-caliber Mark 45 guns.

On January 17, 1993 — the battle's anniversary — while in the Persian Gulf, she fired 10 Tomahawk missiles in response to Iraqi violations of U.S. sanctions. On March 20, 2003, she fired the first Tomahawk into Iraq in Operation Iraqi Freedom.

Her coat of arms carries both histories:

• muskets, bayonets and a drum for the battle, and three lines for the three lines in which Morgan placed his troops;
• the motto "Victoria Libertatis Vindex" — "Victory Vindicates Liberty" — from the medal Congress awarded Morgan for Cowpens;
• blue, gold, red and green for CVL-25's Navy Unit Commendation, and twelve stars in a circle for her battle stars;
• a Navy sword for service and the ship's vertical launch capability, and rays shooting upward for air combat support and the Aegis weapons system.

Sources

Based on "USS Cowpens," Cowpens National Battlefield, National Park Service; a work of the United States government in the public domain. The source calls the document signed aboard the USS Missouri a "peace treaty"; it was the Japanese surrender. It spells the motto "Victoria Liberatis Vindex"; the Latin is Libertatis. Its photograph of CVL-25 bears a 1943 copyright notice and is not reproduced.