High Quality Content by WIKIPEDIA articles! USS Birmingham (CL-62), a light cruiser named for the city of Birmingham, Alabama, the "Steel City", was a Cleveland class light cruiser laid down at the Newport News Shipbuilding and Dry Dock Company of Newport News in Virginia on 17 February 1941 and launched on 20 March 1942 by Mrs. Cooper Green, wife of the president of the Birmingham City Commission. She was commissioned on 29 January 1943. Birmingham was one of the "fightingest" ships of the Navy and suffered heavy damage on at least three occasions.