Gilligan’s summer cruise
It happened 75 years ago this month.
Official period caption: “Arrival of Northwest Naval Reserves on board USS Gilligan (DE 508) at Seattle, Washington, for training cruise to Acapulco, Mexico, 17 June 1950.” The men were to reactivate the tin can– laid up since 1946– and take her on a four-week training cruise to Mexico, and return.
80-G-421227
Named after a Marine Raider mortally wounded in action at Tulagi in August 1942, Gilligan was a John C. Butler-class destroyer escort built in New Jersey and commissioned less than two years later, sponsored by the namesake’s grieving mother.
By the second anniversary of PFC Gilligan’s passing, the ship named after him was serving in the Pacific, ultimately earning at least one battlestar during antiaircraft and antisubmarine screening efforts around Okinawa and in the Lingayen Gulf, surviving both a dud Japanese torpedo hit and a glancing blow from a kamikaze.
As noted by NHHC:
Gilligan detected an incoming Betty twin-engine bomber at 8 miles and finally sighted it at very low altitude at 1,000 yards, firing its nose gun at the ship. In a rarely recorded case of a sailor losing his nerve, a range finder operator jumped from his station down onto the main battery director, knocking it off target, preventing the 5-inch guns from getting off more than one round before the plane struck. The kamikaze flew directly into the muzzles of the No. 2 40-mm gun, killing 12 men and wounding 13, who stayed at their station firing until the very end. Despite a massive fireball, Gilligan’s crew was able to get the fires under control by 0715. Another kamikaze came in for an attack on Richard W. Suesens, who was searching for Gilligan crewmen who had been blown overboard. Despite her damage, Gilligan’s gunners joined in firing on the kamikaze, which was in a near-vertical dive. The kamikaze pilot was probably killed, but the plane’s momentum carried it down, and it clipped the aft 40-mm gun as it crashed into the sea close aboard, wounding 11.
Decommissioned in 1946 and laid up ultimately in Seattle, Gilligan recommissioned there on 15 June 1950 in response to the new war in Korea.
Northwest Naval Reserve Personnel on board USS Gilligan (DE 508) for a four-week training cruise to Acapulco, Mexico, and return, June-July 1950. Hospitalman James R. Piercey administers an anti-typhoid shot to warrant officer, Chief Electrician James H. Ross. 80-G-421217
Northwest Naval Reserve Personnel on board USS Gilligan (DE 508) for a four-week training cruise to Acapulco, Mexico, and return, June-July 1950. Seaman Richard L. Smith takes his turn at peeling the potatoes. 80-G-421216
Personnel from USS Charles E. Brannon (DE 446) and USS Gilligan (DE 508) on liberty while at Acapulco, Mexico, during a four-week training cruise of Northwest Naval Reserves to Mexico. FN Daniel T. O’Donnell and FN Glenn A. Scatterday consume soft drinks, 6-7 July 1950. 80-G-421219
Gilligan remained on the West Coast for the next nine years, conducting training cruises as the Cold War grew colder. Decommissioned on 31 March 1959, she was kept in mothballs “just in case” through Vietnam, then sold for scrapping in November 1973.