When President Hoover reviewed American and foreign war craft at the Yorktown, VA. celebration last May, he made the USS SALT LAKE CITY his flagship. That craft now is based at Long Beach, CA. as part of the scouting force. Captain Lewis Coxe, commander of the vessel at the review, still is skipper.

The SALT LAKE CITY is three years old, and is a cruiser of the 10,000-ton Washington Treaty Class.

Captain Coxe never before was stationed in Long Beach, but he was in San Diego in 1927 and 1928 in command of Destroyer Squadron Twelve. The latter year his squadron won the highest merit in battle efficiency for squadrons.

The captain is a native of Pennsylvania. He was graduated from the United States Naval Academy in 1901 and he has had a varied service career. From 1903 to 1906 he served in European waters in the USS BROOKLYN and from 1913 to 1916 he saw foreign service in the Philippines and in China in command of the USS ELCANO. He was in the Yangtze patrol. Captain Coxe commanded the troop transport SARATOGA on the first military expedition to France in June, 1917, and he received a special letter of commendation from the Secretary of the Navy for that service. He is the possessor of West Indies Campaign and Victory Medals.

The SALT LAKE CITY was commissioned at Philadelphia, December 11, 1929. The ship can make 32 3/4 knots. It is 586 feet long, has a beam of 65 feet and a draft of 20 feet. It carries 55 officers, 540 bluejackets and 40 Marines.

There are four turbine engines and four propellers. The main battery consist of ten eight-inch guns mounted in four center line turrets and an anti-aircraft battery of four five-inch anti-aircraft guns. In addition the vessel carries two triple torpedo tubes, twelve torpedoes and four scouting seaplanes launched from two broadside catapults. The ship is steered by a hydraulic-electric engine and all auxiliary machinery is electric or hydraulic.

The SALT LAKE CITY made the first trip after commissioning known as a "shakedown" cruise, to the harbor of Rio de Janeiro, Brazil, and spent its first Christmas there under the shadow of the famous "Sugar Loaf."