USS Trippe (DD-403)
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History | |
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Namesake | John Trippe |
Builder | Boston Navy Yard |
Laid down | 15 April 1937 |
Launched | 14 May 1938 |
Commissioned | 1 November 1939 |
Decommissioned | 28 August 1946 |
Stricken | 19 February 1948 |
Fate | Sunk as target 3 February 1948 |
General characteristics | |
Class and type | Benham-class destroyer |
Displacement | 1,850 tons |
Length | 341 ft 1 in |
Beam | 35 ft 5 in |
Draft | 9 ft 10 in |
Speed | 38.5 knots |
Complement | 230 officers and enlisted |
Armament | 4 × 5 in (130 mm)/38 guns, 4 .50 cal (12.7 mm) guns. ma.16 21" |
The third USS Trippe (DD-403) was a Benham-class destroyer in the United States Navy. She was named for John Trippe.
Operational history
Trippe was laid down on 15 April 1937 by the Boston Navy Yard, launched on 14 May 1938; sponsored by Miss Betty S. Trippe and placed in commission on 1 November 1939.
Trippe spent the remainder of 1939 outfitting at
For eight months, the destroyer roamed the warm waters of the
North Atlantic duty
On 21 March, the warship began a two-month overhaul at Boston. On 24 April, while Trippe continued repairs, President Roosevelt extended the Neutrality Patrol to the very edge of the German war zone. When Trippe emerged from her refit in May, she visited Norfolk and then trained out of Newport until early June. On 11 June, she joined the screen of
Trippe continued patrolling out of Newport, first with Texas and then with
World War II
In mid-November, Trippe escorted Ranger south to the West Indies and screened flight operations conducted from that carrier in the vicinity of Trinidad until early December. She was returning north with the carrier on 7 December when the Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor jolted the United States into World War II. America's entry into the war, however, did not change Trippe's assignment. She continued to escort transatlantic convoys and to hunt U-boats. She stopped at Norfolk for a week and then headed for Newport on 10 December. Just before dawn on 16 December, an Army bomber approached her from the north and after making several passes dropped a stick of bombs and reported sinking a German destroyer in Block Island Sound. Trippe emerged unscathed the bombs exploded some 200 yards off her bow and continued on to Newport where she arrived that same day.
Over the next 10 months, Trippe was all over the northwestern
In October 1942, Trippe cleared the Chesapeake Bay area and steamed north to Newport where she arrived on the 7th. For the next two weeks, she operated with Massachusetts while the new battleship practiced shore bombardment for the upcoming invasion of French North Africa. During the pre-dawn hours of 19 October, she was steaming for Casco Bay when Benson struck Trippe on her starboard quarter, killing four Trippe crewmen and injuring three others. On 13 November, Trippe completed repairs at New York and got underway for antisubmarine warfare training at New London, Connecticut.
Following almost a month of training and escorting coastal convoys, Trippe departed New York in the screen of her first convoy bound for Casablanca. She returned to New York on 7 February 1943 and conducted more training. In April, the destroyer made another round-trip voyage to Morocco and escorted a coastal convoy to Norfolk before heading for the Mediterranean. On 10 May, the warship arrived at Oran, Algeria. She then screened convoys between that port and Bizerte, conducted patrols, and practiced shore bombardment in preparation to support the Allied landings on Sicily.
On 9 July, the destroyer left Oran in the screen of a Sicily-bound convoy and was still at sea when Allied troops clambered ashore the following day. She arrived off Gela on the 14th, the day following the landings at that port, and patrolled that area until the 20th when she returned to Oran. However, the destroyer arrived back at Sicily the same day this time at Palermo. Three days later, the Luftwaffe attacked the anchorage. To elude radar, the German medium bombers approached from the south, low over the Sicilian mountains, and circled the targets. As Trippe zigzagged to evade bombing and strafing planes, her 5-inch battery barked defiantly. When the raid was over, she claimed credit for one of the German eagles
Up north, while
.The
British troops landed at Reggio, Italy, on 3 September to begin the long, bitter drive up the Italian peninsula. Two days later, Trippe put to sea to escort a convoy to the assault beaches at Salerno, just south of Naples. This attack, aimed at turning German defenses in the south of Italy, was launched on the morning of 9 September 1943. The troops ran into heavy enemy resistance. The Luftwaffe and heavy coastal batteries took a heavy toll of the landing force, but Trippe and other fire support ships brought their batteries to bear and helped the troops ashore consolidate their beachhead.
After several round-trip voyages between Salerno and Oran, she returned to the
Trippe occupied the next month with convoy operations in the western Mediterranean and patrol work off Oran. On 18 November, she sailed from Gibraltar with
On the afternoon of 16 December, the destroyer put to sea in company with Edison and Woolsey to hunt for the survivors of a torpedoed merchantman. While searching for castaways, the three warships also sought the U-boat itself. Early that evening, they made radar contact on U-73 steaming on the surface. Woolsey switched on her searchlights, and Trippe's fire control radar locked onto the target. The two destroyers immediately opened up with their main batteries and pumped salvo after salvo of 5-inch shells into the German submarine. Six minutes after visual contact, U-73 went down for the last time all the way to the bottom. While Woolsey picked up the German submariners, Trippe made sure that U-73 had no colleagues lurking in the area. The destroyers then returned to Oran.
At the beginning of 1944, the destroyer was at Palermo, Sicily. On 21 January, she got underway to support the Allied landings at Anzio, located farther up the Italian peninsula near Rome. The next day, she took station with Brooklyn and Edison, and her guns supported the troops going ashore. Two days later, she fought off a Luftwaffe air attack. She returned to gunfire support on the 25th and bombarded enemy troops and vehicles. On 31 January, she pounded troop concentrations and vehicles and demolished an observation post. Trippe hit two German strong points on 5 February. She was relieved of duty on the gunline on 10 February and returned to Oran, rescuing two downed British flyers along the way.
On 23 February, Trippe steamed to Casablanca, where she joined a hunter-killer group built around Card and got underway for the United States. During the voyage, the escort carrier and the five destroyers in her screen conducted air, sound, and radar searches for German submarines. Trippe parted company with the task unit on 4 March and, after a stop at Bermuda, put into New York for a month of upkeep. Following refresher training, she conducted hunterkiller operations out of Casco Bay. Late in May, she escorted Hancock on the first leg of the new carrier's shakedown cruise before joining Cooper for electronics countermeasure experiments in Chesapeake Bay. She put into Norfolk on 3 June, but departed the next day with Ticonderoga for air operations off the Virginia capes. From 19 June until Independence Day 1944, Trippe conducted exercises in the Gulf of Paria near Trinidad. On 9 July, she returned to Boston with Hancock and began a 19-day availability. Between 28 July and 23 October, the destroyer made two round-trip voyages between the United States and southern Italy escorting convoys to and from that bitterly contested campaign. For the remainder of the year, she conducted training near Casco Bay and screened Shangri La during air operations near Trinidad. Late in February 1945, Trippe escorted another convoy to the Mediterranean, this time to Oran. She returned to New York during the first week in April and began a brief yard period.
Repairs complete, Trippe headed south with a convoy bound for the Canal Zone. She transited the canal, stopped at
Post war
Trippe remained in the Far East participating in the surrender negotiations with Japanese garrisons remaining in the Marianas and Bonin Islands. On 5 November, she returned to Saipan and began a month of patrols, training, and air-sea rescue operations north of that island. On 16 December, she cleared Guam to return to the United States.
Her homecoming was brief, however, for on 16 January 1946, she steamed back to Pearl Harbor to prepare for
Honors
Trippe earned six
References
This article incorporates text from the public domain Dictionary of American Naval Fighting Ships. The entry can be found here.