USS Abercrombie
History | |
---|---|
United States | |
Name | Abercrombie |
Namesake | William Abercrombie |
Builder | Consolidated Steel Corporation, Orange, Texas |
Laid down | 8 November 1943 |
Launched | 14 January 1944 |
Commissioned | 1 May 1944 |
Decommissioned | 15 June 1946 |
Stricken | 1 May 1967 |
Identification | DE-343 |
Fate | Sunk as target 7 January 1968 |
General characteristics | |
Class and type | John C. Butler-class destroyer escort |
Displacement | 1,350 tons |
Length | 306 ft (93 m) |
Beam | 36 ft 8 in (11.18 m) |
Draft | 9 ft 5 in (2.87 m) |
Propulsion | 2 boilers, 2 geared turbine engines, 12,000 shp (8,900 kW); 2 propellers |
Speed | 24 knots (44 km/h; 28 mph) |
Range | 6,000 nmi (11,000 km; 6,900 mi) at 12 kn (22 km/h; 14 mph) |
Complement | 222 |
Armament |
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USS Abercrombie (DE-343) was a John C. Butler-class destroyer escort in the service of the United States Navy from 1944 to 1946. She was finally sunk as a target in 1968.
Namesake
William Warner Abercrombie was born on 24 July 1914 in
During the Battle of Midway on the morning of 4 June 1942, Waldron led 15 Douglas TBD Devastators, one piloted by Abercrombie, from the USS Hornet's flight deck. He located the Imperial Japanese Navy carrier force and led them in on their torpedo runs. VT-8 pressed home a desperate attack in the face of fighters and heavy antiaircraft fire, and all 15 planes were shot down. Abercrombie received a Navy Cross, and a share of VT-8's Presidential Unit Citation, posthumously.
History
Construction and commissioning
Abercrombie's
May – October 1944
The destroyer escort spent the first three weeks of May in the vicinity of Galveston, Texas either at sea in the Gulf of Mexico testing her ordnance and equipment or in port receiving finishing touches in preparation for shakedown training. She conducted her shakedown cruise in the British West Indies late in May and early in June before putting into Boston on 25 June for post-shakedown repairs. Eleven days later, Abercrombie headed south to Norfolk where she stopped over on the night of 7 and 8 July. From there the warship took departure for Aruba, a Dutch island off the coast of Venezuela, and a transshipment and refining center for Venezuelan crude oil, in company with USS Walter C. Wann, USS Chepachet, and USS Salamonie. Abercrombie and Walter C. Wann shepherded the two oilers into port at Aruba late in the evening of 15 July. Two days later after the oilers loaded cargo, the convoy put to sea again.
After seeing Chepachet and Salamonie safely to the Panama Canal, Abercrombie began two weeks of patrol and escort duty in the Caribbean Sea that ended on 1 August when she entered the canal. Following two days of liberty at Balboa, Panama, the destroyer escort got underway for San Diego where she arrived on 11 August. On 22 August, Abercrombie set sail for Hawaii, arriving at Pearl Harbor a week later. For three weeks, the warship conducted training exercises with escort carriers in the Hawaiian Islands before putting to sea on 19 September to escort USS General W. F. Hase to Manus in the Admiralty Islands.
Abercrombie and her charge entered
For the next five days, the destroyer escort screened the carriers against
November 1944 – March 1945
After the excitement of 25 October, the warship spent the remainder of the month screening the escort carriers. She then headed back to Manus in the Admiralty Islands where she arrived on 3 November. Abercrombie remained at Manus for most of November, setting sail for the northern Solomons, Bougainville on 28 November. After amphibious landing exercises at Cape Torokina on Bougainville and at Huon Gulf, New Guinea, she returned to Manus to make final preparations for the invasion of Luzon.
On 27 December, the destroyer escort put to sea in company with a large group of amphibious ships. For the invasion of Luzon, Abercrombie served as the
On the night of 8 and 9 January 1945, the destroyer escort entered Lingayen Gulf. Early on the morning of the 9th, she steamed in close to shore to take up station as a control ship for the amphibious craft. She anchored about 4,500 yards (4,100 m) off the main assault beaches near the town of
By 1100, the general lack of resistance on the beaches allowed the transports and cargo ships to move inshore to complete disembarking troops and unloading supplies and equipment. That development freed Abercrombie of control ship duties, and she steamed out to join the antiaircraft screen for empty transports awaiting the formation of convoys for the return voyage to rear area bases. That evening, the warship stood out of Lingayen Gulf in the screen of one such convoy and escorted it by way of Leyte to
On 21 March, Abercrombie departed Leyte with TG 51.1 as part of the screen for the Western Islands Attack Group. That unit's assignment was to secure
April – December 1945
She cleared the Ryukyu Islands on 5 April in company with Task Unit (TU) 51.29.4 and set a course for the Marianas. The destroyer escort stopped at Saipan from 9 to 11 April and then put to sea in company with USS Mustin bound for Ulithi. After spending the night of 12 and 13 April at Ulithi, Abercrombie sortied from the anchorage on 13 April with TG 55.8 for the return voyage to Okinawa.
Arriving back in the Ryūkyūs on 17 April, the destroyer escort spent the next two months performing a variety of services in support of the campaign to wrest Okinawa from the Japanese. During that period, anti-air defense proved to be the most pressing problem. Enemy air power in the form of both kamikaze and conventional raids tested the Navy's endurance nearly to the limit. Ships such as Abercrombie patrolling the radar picket stations surrounding Okinawa provided early warnings of incoming air raids and bore the brunt of those onslaughts. The destroyer escort tangled with Japanese planes on at least 16 separate occasions, claiming two definite kills and two assists. When not standing watch on a radar picket station, Abercrombie conducted antisubmarine searches, rescued downed American airmen, and provided escort services to a variety of ships.
On 14 June, the warship departed the Ryūkyūs in company with TU 31.29.8, bound for the Marianas. She arrived at Saipan four days later and remained there, undergoing routine maintenance while her crew enjoyed some respite from the rigors of duty at Okinawa, until the end of the month. Abercrombie returned to sea on 1 July to proceed independently to Okinawa. She reached her destination on 4 July 1945 but remained there only two days. On 6 July, she cleared the Ryūkyūs as a unit of TF 32 to join the
The warship took departure from Okinawa once again on 8 August and shaped a course for Leyte in the Philippines. She entered
1946–1968
Early in 1946, Abercrombie was towed to San Diego where she was placed out of commission on 15 June 1946. Berthed with the San Diego Group,
Honors
Abercrombie earned four
References
- Stafford, Edward P. Little Ship, Big War: The Saga of DE343 Naval Institute Press, 2000 ISBN 1-55750-890-9. This book is notable for its intense first person view of the operations of this ship and for its lively and evocative prose style.
- This article incorporates text from the public domain Dictionary of American Naval Fighting Ships. The entry can be found here.
External links