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History | |
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Laid down | 24 August 1943 |
Launched | 25 September 1943 |
Commissioned | 27 October 1943 |
Decommissioned | 3 February 1947 |
Stricken | 1 December 1972 |
Fate | Sold for scrap 11 September 1973 |
General characteristics | |
Displacement | |
Length | 306 ft 0 in (93.27 m) |
Beam | 36 ft 9 in (11.20 m) |
Draft | 13 ft 6 in (4.11 m) |
Propulsion |
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Speed | 24 knots (44 km/h) |
Range | 4,940 nautical miles (9,150 km) at 12 knots (22 km/h) |
Complement | 15 officers, 198 men |
Armament |
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USS Gillette (DE-681) was a Buckley-class destroyer escort of the United States Navy in service from 1943 to 1947. She was finally scrapped in 1973.
Douglas Wiley Gillette was born on 10 September 1918 in Wilmington, North Carolina. He enlisted in the United States Naval Reserve on 5 March 1936. After serving at Naval Station Norfolk, on the USS McDongal and after studying at the United States Naval Academy and Northwestern University, he was commissioned Ensign on 12 September 1941. Ordered to active duty on the carrier USS Hornet on 17 November 1941, he was appointed Lieutenant (junior grade) (temporary). He was killed in action in the Battle of Santa Cruz Islands on 26 October 1942.
The ship launched on 25 September 1943 by the Bethlehem Steel Co.'s Fore River Shipyard, Quincy, Massachusetts; sponsored by Mrs. Pearl M. Gillette, the namesake's mother; and commissioned on 27 October 1943.
After shakedown off Bermuda, Gillette sailed from Boston on 2 January 1944 for Balboa, C.Z., where for four months she conducted intensive exercises with submarines and escorted a convoy to Guantanamo Bay, Cuba, and returned. She sailed 9 May for Puerto Limon, Costa Rica, on a good-will tour and visited Barranquilla, Colombia, as well before returning to Boston 2 June.
From 4 July 1944 to 18 February 1945, Gillette made four round trip transatlantic escort voyages – three out of Hampton Roads and one from New York – to Oran and United Kingdom ports protecting Allied shipping. She subsequently served as a submarine training ship at New London, Connecticut, until 14 April 1945.
On 14 April 1945, she sailed for Hollandia via Borabora and Manus, and escorted a convoy thence to Manila, where she put in 17 June. Patrol and escort duties in the Philippines and to Ulithi occupied the busy ship until 6 August, when she sailed for Okinawa and returned as convoy escort to Subic Bay on 17 August. Following a round trip escort voyage from Subic Bay to Tokyo and return, Gillette continued patrol and logistics duties in the Philippines until departing Subic Bay on 26 November for San Diego, Calif., where she moored on 17 December 1945.
Gillette remained at San Diego until decommissioned there 3 February 1947 and placed in reserve with the Pacific group at San Diego.
Gillette was stricken from the Naval Vessel Register on 1 December 1972, sold on for scrapping on 11 September 1973. [1]
USS Herbert (DD-160) was a Wickes-class destroyer. She was named for Hilary A. Herbert (1834–1919), Secretary of the Navy from 1893 to 1897.
Mahan-class destroyers of the United States Navy were a series of 18 destroyers of which the first 16 were laid down in 1934. The last two of the 18, Dunlap and Fanning, are sometimes considered a separate ship class. All 18 were commissioned in 1936 and 1937. Mahan was the lead ship, named for Rear Admiral Alfred Thayer Mahan, an influential historian and theorist on sea power.
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