USS Yarnell

The Harry E. Yarnell was a Leahy-class guided-missile cruiser that served as a flagship for U.S. naval forces in the Mediterranean and Atlantic through the 1960s and 1970s. Named for an Admiral who championed naval aviation before it was widely accepted, she was a product of Cold War naval innovation—built to engage Soviet threats at the horizon with missiles. Decommissioned in 1980, she represented a generation of ships shaped by the admiral’s visionary thinking. Her crew served in a Navy he helped build.