She was the sole member of the Long Beach class, and the last cruiser built for the United States Navy to a cruiser design; all subsequent cruiser classes were built on scaled-up destroyer hulls and originally classified as destroyer leaders or, in the case of the Albany class , converted from already existing cruisers.
Long Beach was laid down 2 December , launched 14 July and commissioned 9 September under the command of then- Captain Eugene Parks Wilkinson , who previously served as the first commanding officer of the world's first nuclear-powered vessel, the submarine USS Nautilus.
But by the s, nuclear power was deemed too expensive to use on surface ships smaller than an aircraft carrier in view of defense budget cutbacks after the end of the Cold War. Long Beach was decommissioned on 1 May instead of receiving her third nuclear refueling and proposed upgrade. After removal of the nuclear fuel , superstructure, and sections of the bow and stern, the hull segment containing the reactor and machinery spaces was moored at Puget Sound Naval Shipyard and sold for scrap.
Long Beach was originally intended to be a smaller frigate, but was then redesigned and expanded to a cruiser hull, allowing for an open space just aft of the bridge "box".
This open space was first planned to accommodate the mounting of a Regulus nuclear-armed cruise missile , but was then changed to four launch tubes for the Polaris missile. At the time, Long Beach had the highest bridge of any ship smaller than an aircraft carrier. In addition to steel, Long Beach was built with tons of structural aluminum.
