Happy Navy Day! A Great Get Together
90 years ago today. 28 October 1935. Official caption: “Huge crowds crammed the Navy Yard as the Navy went on show for the Navy Day celebration. This picture shows the U.S.S. Dale, the largest type destroyer in the service.”
Harris & Ewing, photographer LC-DIG-hec-39511
The above image, likely at the Washington Navy Yard as Harris & Ewing Inc. was a photo studio in Washington, D.C. owned and run by George W. Harris and Martha Ewing, is just great due to its detailed crowd shot. You can zoom in and just drink in the clothes, the cars, the characters, and the slice of life frozen in time. You can even make out the license plate numbers.
As for the well-dressed and turned-out USS Dale (DD-353), she was a brand-new Farragut-class destroyer that had just been commissioned four months prior (17 June 1935) and was the third warship named for American Revolutionary War hero Richard Dale. She would soon transit to the West Coast where she would take part in one of the most stirring U.S. Navy interwar photo shoots on record.
Destroyers on Maneuvers with planes overhead. Ships from the left are USS Monaghan (DD-354), USS Dale (DD-353), USS Worden (DD-352), and USS Macdonough. Note that signal flags are repeated throughout the squadron. NH 60270.
DesRon20 Steam through a smokescreen laid by planes of Patrol Squadrons Seven, Nine, and Eleven, during an exhibition staged for Movietone News off San Diego, California, 14 September 1936. The ships are, from bottom to top: Farragut (DD-348), Dewey (DD-349), Hull (DD-350), Macdonough (DD-351), Worden (DD-352), Dale (DD-353), Monaghan (DD-354) and Aylwin (DD-355). Courtesy of Commander Robert L. Ghormley, Jr., USN, 1969. NH 67293
What a great picture! A P2Y right, of VP-7 with an early PBY-1, left, of VP-11 flying over USS DALE (DD-353) of DESRON-20, during an exhibition for Movietone News off San Diego on 14 September 1936. Description: Courtesy of Commander Robert L. Ghormley Jr., Washington DC, 1969 Catalog #: NH 67305
However, our destroyer went on to do more than just look pretty.
In the Pacific War from the first day, she was moored with Destroyer Division Two at Berth X-14 at Pearl Harbor on 7 December 1941 and fired at incoming Japanese planes within minutes. Dale received 14 battle stars for her World War II service which included screening USS Lexington and Yorktown during the Coral Sea, doing the same for USS Washington and South Dakota during the Guadalcanal campaign, fighting in the push to liberate the Aleutians (which saw her exchange fire with Japanese cruisers at the Battle of the Komandorski Islands), then on to the Marianas, Philippines, and Japan.
Dale was decommissioned on 16 October 1945 and was sold for scrap on 20 December 1946. The name was recycled for a Leahy-class guided-missile destroyer leader (DLG-19, later CG-19) that served from 1963 through 1994, liquidated in the Great Cruiser Slaughter of the Clinton administration.