USS Walton
| |
| History | |
|---|---|
 United States | |
| Name | Walton |
| Namesake | Merrit Cecil Walton |
| Builder | Consolidated Steel Corporation, Orange, Texas |
| Laid down | 21 March 1944 |
| Launched | 20 May 1944 |
| Commissioned | 4 September 1944 |
| Decommissioned | 31 May 1946 |
| Commissioned | 26 January 1951 |
| Decommissioned | 20 September 1968 |
| Stricken | 23 September 1968 |
| Identification | DE-361 |
| Fate | Sunk as target, 7 August 1969 |
| 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 | 14 officers, 201 enlisted |
| Armament |
|
USS Walton (DE-361) was a
Walton's
Namesake
Merrit Cecil Walton was born on 18 December 1915 in St. Paul, Minnesota. He enlisted in the
Walton was serving in a
Operational history
World War II
After she conducted her
When
Walton began her first active wartime duty at
During February, March, and April, Walton escorted convoys between Hollandia and
In May, Walton visited Manila, Leyte, and Hollandia, before CortDiv 85 received orders to sail for Subic Bay to relieve another division of destroyer escorts that had been conducting antisubmarine sweeps along the west coast of Luzon. Those patrols had been instituted primarily to interdict the flow of enemy submarines from bases in China, Formosa, or the Japanese home islands themselves. Secondarily, Walton and her sister ships were to train British and American submarines prior to their departure for extended war patrols and to escort them to and from a release point where they were starting or finishing such patrols.
During the course of those ensuing duties, Walton escorted
Walton spent the remainder of August at Subic Bay and was there when hostilities with Japan ceased in mid-month. As the fleet moved northward to Japanese waters to commence the occupation of the former enemy's homeland, its necessary train followed. Walton escorted USS Chepachet to a point where the oiler rendezvoused with a fast carrier task group at the end of August, before the destroyer escort put into Buckner Bay, anchoring there on 2 September 1945 – the day of Japan's formal surrender.
Walton later departed Okinawa to escort hospital ship
Repaired alongside USS Jason, Walton subsequently escorted USS Geneva to Taku, China. Once there, the attack transport embarked internees from camps in North China and sailed from that port for the Shantung peninsula and South China. Walton stood by while Geneva embarked former civilian internees at Qingdao, and she accompanied the transport on a voyage to Hong Kong. While en route, on 10 and 11 October, the ships rode out the outer edge of a typhoon swirling its way up the China coast. Walton – although buffeted by 30-and-40-foot (9.1 and 12.2 m) waves and winds clocked at over 60 knots (110 km/h) – sustained no material damage.
Arriving at Hong Kong on 13 October, Walton remained at that port until 4 November when she weighed anchor for Shanghai, China – where her namesake had served in the late 1930s – and escorted the stores issue ship USS Iolanda to that port. Walton next returned to Jinsen, hunting for and sinking stray mines while acting as an escort.
At Jinsen on 20 November, Walton received the long-awaited homeward-bound orders and, in company with
Korean War and fate
The destroyer escort remained inactive until the Korean War. Recommissioned at San Diego on 26 January 1951 Walton operated off the coast of California, training and assisting in the training of submarines and sonar teams, into the spring of the next year.
The destroyer escort – her homeport officially changed from San Diego to Pearl Harbor on 4 November 1951; she departed San Diego on 19 April 1952, bound for the Far East, in company with destroyer escorts USS Currier and USS Marsh. USS McCoy Reynolds rendezvoused with those three ships at Pearl Harbor to complete CortDiv 92. Walton arrived off Hungnam on 17 May and immediately assumed patrol and blockade duties off the Korean coast.
Over the next four months, Walton worked jointly with the naval units of other
During that Far Eastern deployment, Walton also engaged in patrolling the
Returning to Pearl Harbor on 29 August, Walton underwent a shipyard availability during September and, over the ensuing months, conducted a regular schedule of training operations in the Hawaiian operating area. After a major overhaul at Pearl Harbor, Walton got underway on 9 May 1953 sailing, via
Even after the signing of the armistice on 27 July brought an uneasy peace to the Korean peninsula, there was still work for Walton in Far Eastern waters. The ship participated in port visit to Hong Kong; underwent upkeep in Subic Bay, Philippines visited Yokosuka, Sasebo, and Kobe, Japan, and operated in Korean waters again that November before sailing as part of a simulated convoy screen and reaching Pearl Harbor on 11 December 1953.
Walton remained in Hawaiian waters into the summer of 1954, conducting a varying slate of operations that included exercises in gunnery communications engineering, antisubmarine warfare navigation, and tactics—broken from time to time by the usual upkeep and maintenance periods in port. She also participated in a hunter-killer exercise in May that helped to evaluate killer submarines. Departing Pearl Harbor on 15 June, Walton began her third deployment to the Western Pacific (WestPac). On 9 July, she relieved the seaplane tender
Walton departed Hong Kong on 8 November and proceeded back to Pearl Harbor, via the Philippines, Guam and Midway, having to dodge two more typhoons (Ruby and Sally) while en route. The destroyer escort then spent the period from late November 1954 to early May 1955 in the Hawaiian Islands, training and undergoing needed upkeep.
On 11 May 1955, Walton set sail for the
During the latter part of July, Walton visited the northern Marianas, the Bonin and Volcano Islands and Yokosuka, before she resumed SAR duties at Guam. She divided September between surveillance in the western Carolines and SAR at Guam before sailing on 22 September for Pearl Harbor. She arrived home, via Kwajalein, on 1 October.
Walton subsequently conducted two more WestPac deployments out of Pearl Harbor. During the fifth deployment, the ship visited
During the ship's sixth WestPac deployment, in 1957 the ship conducted five surveillance cruises in the Bonins, the Carolines, and the northern Mariana Islands. Also – in company with her sister ship USS McGinty – she visited Townsville, Australia – via Subic Bay and Manus – arriving "down under" on 19 August 1957. After five days of hearty Australian hospitality, the two escort vessels set out for Pago Pago, Samoa, on the first leg of their voyage back to Pearl Harbor where they arrived on 5 November.
Following a three-month overhaul at the Pearl Harbor Naval Shipyard, Walton conducted underway training evolutions and type training in the Hawaiian Islands through the spring of 1958. Ultimately, on 30 June 1958, was reassigned to Reserve CortRon 1, Reserve CortDiv 12. With her home port officially changed to
Walton's mission was now to train Naval Reserve personnel. Over the next three years, she operated out of San Francisco on reserve training cruises that took the ship to such places as
While at Long Beach on 1 October 1961, Walton received word that, in the words of her command history "her shuttling about the west coast was ended for the time being." With her selected reserve crew of 70 men the destroyer escort was recalled to active duty as part of the overall buildup of military force ordered by President John F. Kennedy to meet the communist threat in Berlin and, possibly, elsewhere.
Again homeported at Pearl Harbor, Walton departed the west coast on 23 October for the Hawaiian Islands. She arrived eight days later and immediately commenced underway training evolutions. She later underwent a two-week availability alongside USS Hamul before she resumed underway training. On 4 December, the ship entered the Pearl Harbor Naval Shipyard to commence an overhaul that lasted through the end of the year 1961.
After further underway training evolutions in Hawaiian waters, Walton departed Pearl Harbor on 22 January 1962, bound for the Marianas, on the first leg of her seventh WestPac deployment. After stopping for a day at Guam, she arrived in Subic Bay on 6 February. Nine days later, she got underway for
Following a brief stint of local operations out of Pearl Harbor, Walton sailed for the west coast on 11 July 1962. Arriving at San Francisco on 1 August, she soon resumed her Naval Reserve training role. For the next five years, Walton operated off the west coast training reservists. Ultimately decommissioned on 20 September 1968, Walton was struck from the Navy List on 23 September 1968 and was sunk as a target on 7 August 1969.
Honors
Walton earned two
Notable former crew
- Jack Daniels, World War II
References
- This article incorporates text from the public domain Dictionary of American Naval Fighting Ships. The entry can be found here.
