Greyhound Sardines
A cluster of Great War-era Wickes (Lumberton) class four-piper flush deck destroyers seen out of commission, in mothballs at San Diego, 4 April 1939. The converted fast minelayers USS Montgomery (DM-17) and USS Gamble (DM-15) are present in the foreground, although they still wear their original greyhound hull numbers (DD-121 and DD-123, respectively), but are ornamented with the Mine Force “meatball” insignia on the bow.
Those masts are close enough that Tarzan could swing from one to the other and never touch the deck!
Reactivated to join Mine Division Two in time for Pearl Harbor, Montgomery would be irreparably damaged by a mine in Ngulu Lagoon, Caroline Islands, 17 October 1944, with the death of four of her crew, knocking her out of the war. She was stricken and sold for scrap in 1946.
Likewise, Gamble was also knocked out by Japanese bombs in February 1945 while off Iwo Jima and never repaired.
Between just these two unsung “tin cans,” they earned 11 battle stars in the Pacific, the only way that small boys can: the hard way.