Tag Archives: Clemson class destroyer

Shoehorned Greyhounds

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Mare Island Naval Shipyard‘s Dry Dock No. 2 is filled with six unidentified “four-piper” type flush-deck destroyers circa 1922. To the side, you can see California Avenue, east side near Ninth Street, in Vallejo, California.

Photocopy of photograph (the original is located at Mare Island Archives). The original photographer is unknown. LOC HABS CAL,48-MARI,1BR–1

All of the destroyers are four pipers with four open-mount deck guns and four triple 21-inch torpedo tubes. Of note, the center ship of the top trio has landed two of its torpedo tube racks and has two empty turnstiles looking to heaven.

The arrangement identifies the six as members of the prolific Wickes or follow-on Clemson classes of tin cans of which a staggering 267 hulls were completed between 1917 and 1922. Several of both classes have been profiled on past Warship Wednesdays.

As for Dry Dock No. 2, the 720-foot long/98-foot wide concrete graving dock is still in active service and has been extensively photographed over the years.

Warship Wednesday, July 20, 2022: Four Stacker Convoy King

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Here at LSOZI, we take off every Wednesday for a look at the old steam/diesel navies of the 1833-1954 period and will profile a different ship each week. These ships have a life, a tale all their own, which sometimes takes them to the strangest places. – Christopher Eger

Warship Wednesday, July 20, 2022: Four Stacker Convoy King

Above we see the stern of the Clemson-class tin can USS McCook (Destroyer # 252), in her second career as the Royal Canadian Navy’s Town-class HMCS St. Croix (I 81), with her White Duster flapping in the windy North Atlantic, likely while on convoy duty in 1942. Note her Q.F. 12-pdr. (12-cwt.) gun over the stern with ready rounds in the rack and splinter mats rigged for a modicum of protection. While McCook had a quiet life in her stint with the U.S. Navy, St. Croix throughout her work with the RCN would log time with 28 convoys and bust two of Donitz’s U-boats– not bad for a second-hand “four piper.”

One of the massive fleets of 156 Clemson-class flush decker destroyers, like most of her sisters, McCook came too late to help lick the Kaiser. An expansion of the almost identical Wickes-class destroyers with a third more fuel capacity to enable them to escort a convoy across the Atlantic without refueling, the Clemsons were sorely needed to combat the pressing German submarine threat of the Great War.

At 1,200 tons and with a top speed of 35 knots, they were brisk vessels ready for the task.

Inboard and outboard profiles for a U.S. Navy Clemson-class destroyer, in this case, USS Doyen (DD-280)

Carrying a legacy

Our vessel laid down at the Bethlehem Shipbuilding Corp in Quincy, Massachusetts in September 1918, was the first named in honor of CDR Roderick S. McCook, USN. The Ohio-born McCook was appointed a Mid in 1854 at age 15 and gave 28 years to the Navy, including service on the steam frigate USS Minnesota, the gunboat USS Stars and Stripes, and as XO of the monitor USS Canonicus during the Civil War, distinguishing himself in the latter during the assaults on Fort Fisher to the special thanks of Congress and ADM Porter.

CDR Roderick S. McCook, USN. Promoted to commander on 25 September 1873, McCook died in 1886. NH 47933

U.S. Navy Service

McCook commissioned on 30 April 1919 and, following her shakedown on the East Coast, was folded into the rapidly-shrinking Destroyer Force, Atlantic Fleet. She soon shipped out for Europe at a time when the U.S. was heavily involved in shaping the post-Great War redrawing of the map of that continent and the ensuing cycles of revolution, civil war, and nationalist uprisings.

USS McCook (Destroyer # 252) Dressed in flags in a European port, circa 1919. Photographed by R.E. Wayne (# J-50). NH 46470.

Wicks-class destroyer USS Gridley (DD-92) and USS McCook (DD-252) in Venice during 1919. From the John Dickey collection, via Navsource.

Once Europe began to quiet down, and the Roaring 20s set in, the Navy found McCook (as well as many other tin cans) surplus to its immediate needs, and she was decommissioned at Philadelphia on 30 June 1922 at laid up.

Her entire active USN service would run 1,157 days– barely enough to get her hull dirty.

View of the Reserve Fleet Basin of the Philadelphia Naval Shipyard circa the early 1920s. Visible ships include (left to right): the destroyers USS McCook (DD-252) and USS Benham (DD-49). U.S. Navy photo S-574-M.

Headed to serve the King

With Europe again at war, on 2 September 1940, FDR signed the so-called Destroyers for Bases Agreement that saw a mix of 50 (mostly mothballed) Caldwell (3), Wickes (27), and Clemson (20)-class destroyers transferred to the Royal Navy in exchange for limited basing rights on nine British overseas possessions. Canada would receive seven of these ships including two Clemsons: McCook and her sister USS Bancroft (DD-256).

In respect of Canada’s naming tradition for destroyers, all seven RCN flush deckers were named for Canadian rivers, ideally, those that ran in conjunction with the U.S. border, a nice touch. McCook, therefore, became HCMS St. Croix, so named after the river on the Maine/New Brunswick border, while Bancroft became HMCS St. Francis after the Rivière Saint-François which makes up part of the Maine/Quebec line.

Sailed by scratch USN crews from Philadelphia, McCook was handed over at Halifax on 24 September in a batch of five destroyers.

Transfer of U.S. destroyers to the Royal Navy in Halifax, Sept 1940. Wickes-class destroyers USS Buchanan (DD-131), USS Crowninshield (DD-134), and USS Abel P. Upshur (DD-193) are in the background. The sailors are examining a 4-inch /50 deck gun. Twenty-three Wickes-class destroyers were transferred to the RN, along with four to the RCN, in 1940 under the Destroyers for Bases Agreement. (Library and Archives Canada Photo, MIKAN No. 3199286)

HCMS St. Croix passed through the anti-submarine gates at Halifax, before receiving her camouflage.

Made ready for local patrol, she joined her first convoy, the Halifax-to-Liverpool HX 080, on 12 October– just 18 days after she was handed over. The seas were not kind to the small destroyer.

A battered HCMS St. Croix enters Halifax Harbor on 18 Dec 1940 after enduring a powerful North Atlantic storm. This photograph shows some of the damage inflicted on the ship, including guardrails hanging over the ship’s side (center) and broken windows on the ship’s bridge (top center). Less visible but more serious storm damage included bent steel plating on the bridge and below-deck flooding caused by massive waves. The photograph also emphasizes the ship’s narrow hull, which contributed to its instability in heavy seas and to poor handling. George Metcalf Archival Collection CWM 19900085-1040

As part of the handover, some systems and armament were changed out, after all, McCook had been laid up since 1922 and was all-Yank. Ultimately, three of her four triple-packed torpedo turnstiles were landed as was the aft 4-inch gun, the latter replaced by a British 12-pounder. She also eventually picked up a couple light AAA guns, depth charge racks, British radar (Type 273), medium-frequency direction finders (MF/DF), ASDIC, and depth charge throwers. At least one boiler was removed to increase fuel capacity.

Unidentified personnel manning a four-inch gun aboard HCMS St. Croix at sea, March 1941. LAC 3567312

Manning a .50-caliber water-cooled AAA mount aboard HCMS St. Croix at sea, March 1941. LAC 3571062.

Once modified and updated, she was sent for work with convoys between St Johns and Iceland by April 1941, joining troopship Convoy TC 10.

In October 1941, while part of ON 019A, St. Croix picked up 34 survivors from the Dutch merchant Tuva that was torpedoed and sunk the previous day by the German U-boat U-575 southwest of Iceland.

HCMS St. Croix (Canadian destroyer, 1940) taken circa 1941, at Reykjavik, Iceland. Note camouflage. NH 49941

HMCS St Croix (ex-USS McCook, DD-252) underway circa 1942 via Navsource

On 24 July 1942, while part of the outbound ON 113 convoy from Liverpool to Halifax, St. Croix, under command of 40-year-old LCDR Andrew Hedley Dobson, RCNR, she depth-charged U-90 (Kptlt. Hans-Jürgen Oldörp) to the bottom east of Newfoundland after the boat had attacked her convoy the day before. The U-boat took all 44 of her crew with her on her final dive, now 80 years ago this week.

Commodore L.W. Murray congratulated the Ship’s Company of HCMS St. Croix for sinking the German submarine U-90 on 24 July. St. John’s, Newfoundland, 29 July 1942. LAC 3231215

St. Croix’s crew gathered around her sole remaining set of torpedo tubes during the pier side celebration after sinking the U-90. Note the depth charges to the right. LAC 3231215

Dobson would earn the Distinguished Service Cross on 25 November 1942 for the U-90 sinking. He was still in command when she shared a second submarine kill with the Flower-class corvette HMCS Shediac (K100), against U-87 (Kptlt. Joachim Berger) off the Iberian coast on 4 March 1943 as part of Convoy KMS 10. A killer, U-87 had accounted for 5 Allied merchant ships (38,014 tons) before Shediac/St. Croix would end her budding career.

Speaking of endings, in the spirit of living and dying by the sword in epic proportions, St. Croix would come under the sights of Kptlt. Rudolf Bahr’s U-305 while escorting convoy ON-202 southwest of Iceland on the night of 20 September 1943. One of the first victims of the newly developed Gnat acoustic torpedo, she took three hits from the weapon and sank in the freezing waters in six minutes.

In all, she had served the RN/RCN for just 1,091 days, two months shy of her USN career.

After surviving 13 hours afloat, some five officers and 76 men who had survived St. Croix’s loss were picked up by the River-class frigate HMS Itchen (K 227) the next morning only to have that ship sunk by a Gnat fired from U-666 on 23 September. A single member of St. Croix’s crew, Stoker William Fisher, survived his second sinking in 72 hours. He was rescued by a Polish merchant ship, the Wisla, along with two men of the Itchen.

As noted by the Canadian War Museum, “St. Croix’s loss was felt nationwide because the crew, as on many Canadian ships, was drawn from across the country.”

For what it is worth, U-666, the slayer of HMS Itchen, the event that also claimed 80 of St. Croix’s waterlogged and traumatized crew, would meet her end in 1944 at the hands of 842 Sqn Swordfish of the British escort carrier HMS Fencer, with all hands lost. The Battle of the Atlantic was unforgiving no matter the flag.

Epilogue

All 2,852 Canadian and Newfoundland sailors and soldiers lost at sea in WWII were added to the Great War’s Halifax Memorial at Point Pleasant Park in 1966. RCN vessels and visiting warships render honors when passing the memorial in daylight.

Halifax Memorial

St. Croix’s lost crew is chronicled in a page at For Posterity’s Sake. 

As for her sisters, seven Clemsons were lost at the disaster at Honda Point in 1923, and 18 (including six used by the British) were lost in WWII including one, USS Stewart (DD-224), which was famously raised by the Japanese and used in their Navy only to be recaptured by the USN and given a watery grave after the war. Notably, the other Clemson-class RCN Four-Stacker, HMCS St. Francis (ex-USS Bancroft) who sailed as escort to 20 convoys and engaged the enemy on five occasions somehow managed to survive the conflict.

Those remaining Clemsons not sold off in the 1930s or otherwise sent to Davy Jones were scrapped wholesale in the months immediately after WWII. Sister USS Hatfield was decommissioned on 13 December 1946 and was sold for scrap on 9 May 1947 to NASSCO, the last of her kind in the U.S. Navy.

The final Clemson afloat, USS Aulick (DD-258), joined the Royal Navy as HMS Burnham (H82) in 1940 as part of the “Destroyers for Bases” deal. Laid up in 1944, she was allocated for scrapping on 3 December 1948, the end of an era.

None are preserved and only the scattered wrecks in the Western Pacific, Honda Point, the Med and Atlantic endure.

Few elements of the first USS McCook— or the first HMCS St. Croix— remain today other than engineering documents in the National Archives.

St. Croix is remembered in maritime art.

“HMCS St. Croix and U-Boat in North Atlantic” by Ronald Weyman. Canadian War Museum Beaverbrook Collection of War Art CWM 19710261-5628. Weyman served aboard the St. Croix as a naval gunnery officer and only narrowly missed being on the ship when she was sunk and later went on to become an award-winning film and television director and producer after the war. His artwork likely depicts the moment U-90 was sunk on July 24, 1942.

A well-done scale model of HMCS St. Croix is on display at The Military Museums in Calgary along with photos of her service.

(Credit: Naval Museum Assoc. of Alberta via The Military Museums).

Meanwhile, the CFB Esquimalt Naval and Military Museum has an exhibit that includes letters from Stoker Fisher, St. Croix’s sole survivor.

The U.S. Navy quickly reused the McCook name in WWII, christening in April 1942 the Gleaves-class destroyer DD-496 (later DMS-46), sponsored by Mrs. Reed Knox, granddaughter of CDR McCook.

Commissioned on 15 March 1943, McCook received three battle stars for World War Il service, all in the ETO. Sent to the Pacific post-war, she was laid up in 1949 at San Diego then at Bremerton before being sent to the breakers in 1973. She was the last USS McCook.

The Canadians likewise commissioned a second St. Croix, a Restigouche-class destroyer (DDE 256) built in the 1950s in Quebec. The Cold Warrior was a big part of the RCN’s ASW plans until paid off early in 1974 due to constrained defense budgets as part of that grinning fool Pierre Trudeau’s Liberal/socialist policies.

The beautiful HMCS St. Croix (DDE 256). She was laid up in 1974, just 18 years after joining the fleet, and was sold in 1991 for scrapping. CFB Esquimalt Museum photo.

Perhaps the RCN could do with a third St. Croix.

Specs:

HMCS St. Croix plan and elevation by LB Jenson

Displacement:
1,215 tons (normal)
1,308 tons (full load)
Length: 314 ft. 4.5 in
Beam: 30 ft. 11.5 in
Draft: 9 ft. 4 in
Propulsion:
4 × boilers, 300 psi (2,100 kPa) saturated steam
2 geared steam turbines
27,600 hp (20,600 kW)
2 shafts
Speed: 35.5 knots
Range: 4,900 nmi (9,100 km) @ 15 knots
Crew: (USN as commissioned)
8 officers
8 chief petty officers
106 enlisted
Armament:

(1920)
4 x 4″/51 cal guns
1 x 3″/23 cal AAA
12 × 21-inch torpedo tubes (4 × 3) (533 mm)

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Warship Wednesday, April 15, 2020: The Winged Spinach Can

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Here at LSOZI, we take off every Wednesday for a look at the old steam/diesel navies of the 1833-1946 time period and will profile a different ship each week. These ships have a life, a tale all their own, which sometimes takes them to the strangest places. – Christopher Eger

Warship Wednesday, April 15, 2020: The Winged Spinach Can

Naval History and Heritage Command Photo NH 73276

Here we see a beautiful profile shot of the Clemson-class “four-piper” destroyer USS Noa (DD-343) underway in San Diego Harbor, about 1930. Note the wooden cabin cruiser in the foreground, and Clemson-class sister USS Kane (DD-235) moored alongside another destroyer in the background. Despite her modest looks, our little tin can would prove influential in the steppingstones of naval aviation, and her namesake even more so in the evolution of space exploration.

One of the massive fleets of Clemson-class flush decker destroyers, like most of her sisters, Noa came too late for the Great War. An expansion of the almost identical Wickes-class destroyers with a third more fuel capacity to enable them to escort a convoy across the Atlantic without refueling, the Clemsons were sorely needed to combat the pressing German submarine threat of the Great War. At 1,200-tons and with a top speed of 35 knots, they were brisk vessels ready for the task.

The subject of our story today was the first warship named after one Midshipman Loveman Noa (USNA 1900).

NH 47525

Born in 1878 at Chattanooga, Tennessee, young Loveman secured an appointment to Annapolis and graduated with his 61-person class in June 1900, back in the days when Mids would have to serve some time with the fleet before picking up their first stripe. Ordered to the Asiatic Station in the battleship Kearsarge, he was assigned once he got there to the recycled captured former Spanish 99-foot gunboat, USS Mariveles, under the command of Lt. (future Fleet Adm) William Leahy.

On the morning of 26 October 1901, Noa led a force of six blue jackets in a small boat to interdict waterborne smugglers between Leyte and Samar. However, with their little boat taking on water, they were forced ashore at the latter, while scouting the adjacent jungle, Noa was attacked and stabbed four times by Filipino insurgents then struck in the head and left for dead. SECNAV Josephus Daniels later wrote Noa’s mother during the Great War to inform her that a new destroyer would be named in her son’s honor.

Laid down at Norfolk Navy Yard a week after Armistice Day in Europe, USS Noa was appropriately sponsored by Midshipman Noa’s sister and commissioned 15 February 1921.

Launch of USS Hulbert 342 & USS Noa 343 on June 28, 1919 (Historic Norfolk Navy Yard Glass Plate Collection, #2273 taken on 6/28/1919

USS Noa (DD-343) at Norfolk Navy Yard, February 11, 1921. From the collection of Lawrence Archambault NHHC Accession #: S-526

Starboard side view of Clemson-class destroyer USS Noa (DD-343) NH 68341

In May 1922, Noa was assigned to her namesake’s old stomping ground, the Asiatic station, which she reached via a flag-waving cruise through the Mediterranean to the Suez, to and Aden and across the Indian Ocean to Ceylon then on to Singapore. For the next seven years, the destroyer would see some very active service in the Philippines and China.

Clemson-class destroyers photographed during the early 1920s. USS Noa (DD-343) in the foreground, with USS Peary (DD-226) in the background. NH 44864

While in China service, she would land a force to guard U.S. interests in Shanghai for two weeks between 25 July and 10 Aug 1925, earning an Expeditionary Medal.

In Nanking as part of a reinforced Yangtze Patrol from January through August 1927, Sailors from Noa and sistership USS William B. Preston (DD-344) put a small landing party ashore to protect refugees at the American consulate and later, with British Tars from the cruiser HMS Emerald, assembled a 250-man landing party ashore to protect escaping refugees from marauding Kuomintang regulars, sweeping into the city to seize it from Yangtze warlord Sun Chuan-Feng’s defeated troops.

A good reference to this event is the Yangtze Patrol by Kemp Tolley and “U.S.S. Noa And the Fall of Nanking” by CPT Ronald Pineau in the November 1955 issue of the USNI’s Proceedings.

Pineau interestingly details how Noa dispatched a low-key guard force to the U.S. consulate, saying

Anticipating that an armed party would surely be barred, Noa’s captain called on the Consul to provide private cars for trans­portation. Pistols were concealed under uni­form coats, field packs were stowed under rugs on the floorboards and, without con­sulting local authorities, the party drove through to the Consulate…A machine gun and am­munition were later smuggled into the American Consulate.

At one point, taking sniper fire from the shore and with 102 refugees aboard, Noa’s skipper, LCDR Roy C. Smith, Jr., ordered his No. 1 and No. 2 4-inchers to open fire on a building where the fire was coming from, an act that Preston soon joined her in. In all, the two Clemsons would fire 67 shells and “thousands of rifle and machinegun rounds.” Smith’s 13-year-old son would also be pressed into helping ferry shells, an act that he would later, as a retired Captain, describe as making him the “last powder monkey.”

Notes Pineau:

Captain Smith of the U.S.S. Noa remarked as he opened fire at Nanking, that he would get either a court-martial or a medal for it. That re­mark should be blazoned in every office, workshop, and institution of the land. It is the willingness to accept the obloquy without complaint, should it come, that makes the reward worth having.

USS Noa (DD-343) dressed in flags at Shanghai, China, while celebrating the Fourth of July 1927. NH 90000

Returning Stateside 14 August 1929 for an overhaul at Mare Island, Noa shifted her homeport from Cavite to San Diego where she served on duties as varied over the next half-decade as a plane guard for the new aircraft carriers USS Langley (CV-1) and USS Saratoga (CV-3), helping with the development of early carrier-group tactics. However, with the downturn in the U.S. economy, she was detailed to red lead row in Philadelphia in 1934 and mothballed.

Enter the destroyer-seaplane concept

In the Fall of 1923, while Noa was deployed half-way around the world, one of her sisters, the Clemson-class destroyer USS Charles Ausburn (DD-294), had a seaplane temporarily installed.

Naval Aircraft Factory TS-1 floatplane (BuNo A-6300) the Clemson-class destroyer USS Charles Ausburn (DD-294) circa 1923 NH 98820

The mounting took place in Hampton Roads and involved a TS-1 floatplane from the nearby Naval Air Station. Installed on a static platform on 29 August, Ausburn went to sea for two days for experimental trails with the floatplane aft while aircrew from USS Langley were attached to study how it endured while underway on the 314-foot tin can– although the plane was not launched from the destroyer and Ausburn had no facilities for fuel, recovery, or launching.

Ausburn returned to Norfolk on 3 September and the TS-1 was craned off. The destroyer was later used in 1925 “to provide plane guard service in the round-the-world flight of Army aircraft, maintaining stations off Greenland and Newfoundland for the historic event,” but never embarked an aircraft again.

Fast forward to 1 April 1940 and, with a new World War in Europe, Noa was dusted off and reactivated at Philadelphia. In a further test of concept, she was fitted with a Curtiss XSOC-1 Seagull seaplane just forward of the after deckhouse, replacing her after torpedo tubes. A boom for lifting the aircraft was stepped in place of the mainmast.

As noted by DANFS:

She steamed for the Delaware Capes in May and conducted tests with an XSOC-1 seaplane piloted by Lt. G. L. Heap. The plane was hoisted onto the ocean for takeoff and then recovered by Noa while the ship was underway. Lt. Heap also made an emergency flight 15 May to transfer a sick man to the Naval Hospital at Philadelphia.

Such dramatic demonstrations convinced the Secretary of the Navy that destroyer-based scout planes had value, and 27 May he directed that six new destroyers of the soon-to-be-constructed Fletcher Class (DD-476 to DD-481) be fitted with catapults and handling equipment. Because of mechanical deficiencies in the hoisting gear, the program was canceled early in 1943.

The concept thus failed to mature as a combat technique, but the destroyer-observation seaplane team was to be revived under somewhat modified conditions during later amphibious operations.

XSOC-1 Seagull floatplane aboard USS Noa. Photos from Henri L. Sans via USSNoaDD841.com

USS Noa (DD-343) insignia circa 1940, showing “winged spinach can” with Popeye at the controls, denoting NOA’s affiliation with aviation duties. She carried a Curtiss SOC-1 Seagull beginning April 1940. Note the destroyer underway on a distant Earth in the background. NH 83946-KN

A second variation of the insignia, NH 83945-KN

Six Fletchers would go on to receive Kingfishers, briefly, ordered immediately after Noa’s short trial with her Seagull. To support the floatplane they had space for 1,780 gals of AvGas installed on deck surrounded by a cofferdam of CO2 for safety purposes. The magazine normally used by the 5-inch gun (Mount 53) removed for the catapult installation was repurposed for the Kingfisher’s bombs and depth charges as well as aircraft tools. Berthing was allocated for a pilot, ordie/gunner and aviation mechanic.

Fletcher-class destroyer USS Halford (DD 480) 14 July 1943 with an O2SU seaplane on the catapult.  (National Archives, photo 80-G-276691.)

Lt. Heap, Noa’s sole aviator, went on to command an airwing, Carrier Air Group Eighty-Two aboard USS Bennington (CV-20) during WWII.

Speaking of the war…

Noa would spend the remainder of the next three years in service to train Midshipmen, provide an afloat platform for the Sonar School at Key West, and operate as a plane guard for the East Coast shakedown of the new Yorktown-class carrier USS Hornet (CV-8), between stints in patrol, rescue, and convoy escort duties.

Spring Paint Job, May 2, 1941. From the original caption, “This year the Navy is painting up, but the traditional light war-color that once gleamed so cleanly in the sun is gone. In its place is the new almost, oxford-grey, color [seen in the image below] that so easily escapes detection in northern waters. USS Noah (DD 343) as she goes through her stages of dressing. Note, the old Coast Guard cutter USS Bear (AG 29) before in stark contrast. U.S. Navy Photograph Lot-854-11: Photographed through Mylar sleeve.

USS Noah (DD 343) This image has her after her new paint scheme, which seems quite a bit darker than haze grey. Lot-854-12

In the summer of 1943, Noa was converted at Norfolk to a “Green Dragon,” a high-speed transport and was reclassified as APD-24 on 10 August 1943.

Some 14 Clemson-class destroyers were similarly converted as APDs, a process that saw the forward fireroom converted to short-term accommodations for up to 200 Marines, with the front two boilers and smokestacks removed. Also deleted were the topside torpedo tubes, replaced with davits for a quartet of LCPL or LCVP landing craft. They could still make 26 knots and float in just 10 feet of seawater.

USS Kane (DD-235 / APD-18): Booklet of General Plans – Outboard Profile / Main Deck NARA 75842398

USS BROOKS (APD-10), former Clemson-class destroyer DD-232, showing the typical APD conversion, of which Noa received. Caption: In San Francisco Bay, California, 24 August 1944. Courtesy of A.D. Baker III., 1981 NH 91790

Class leader USS CLEMSON (APD-31), also showing her APD conversion. Off the Charleston Navy Yard, South Carolina, 21 April 1944.Courtesy of A.D. Baker III., 1981 NH 91795

Noa steamed for Pearl Harbor 4 November 1943 and by early December was a landing craft control ship off New Guinea, very much in the middle of the war in the Pacific. On the day after Christmas, she landed 144 officers and men of the First Marine Division on Cape Gloucester.

Early 1944 saw her active in the amphibious landings at Green Island, Emerau Island, and Hollandia before she ran back to Pearl in May to gather units of the Second Marine Division for landings on Saipan.

In September, while steaming to Palau with UDT members aboard for demo work there, Noa was rammed by the Fletcher-class destroyer USS Fullman (DD-474) at 0350, 12 September and immediately began to settle. Despite the heroic efforts of her crew and others, she slipped beneath the waves seven hours later but gratefully carried no Blue Jackets with her.

USS FULLAM (DD-474) recovers NOA’s survivors as USS HONOLULU (CL-48) stands by in the background, in the morning on 12 September 1944. NOA sank after being rammed by USS FULLAM (DD-474) while both were en route to the invasion of Peleliu. The original caption with the photo has Noa being hit by a Japanese mine. National Archives 80-G-287120

Survivors of USS Noa (APD-24) sunk near Peleliu after being rammed by Fullam on September 12– as seen from the ill-fated USS Indianapolis (CA 35), September 15, 1944. At the extreme right, the Executive Officer is interviewing one of the survivors. 80-G-287125

USS Noa received an Expeditionary Medal for her 1925 China service, the Yangtze Service Medal for her 1927 saga in Shanghai, and five battle stars for World War II service.

Noa II

Keen to quickly recycle the names of historic ships lost during the war, the Navy soon re-issued “Noa” to a Gearing-class destroyer (DD-841) then building at Bath Ironworks. Commissioned 2 November 1945, the greyhound would give 28 years of steady Cold War service without firing a shot in anger before her transfer to Spain as Blas de Lezo (D65) for another 13 years.

The second and final USS NOA, Destroyer No. 841, giving her submarine imitation.

Perhaps the best-known entry on the second Noa’s service record is her recovery of the famous Mercury space program capsule FRIENDSHIP 7 and astronaut Lt. Col. John H. Glenn, Jr., USMC, off the island of Grand Turk after their first human-manned orbit of the globe, 20 February 1962. The Noa picked Glenn up just 21 minutes after impact. In the 13 years of NASA programs with crew splashdowns, from Mercury’s Freedom 7 through Skylab 4, only two destroyers, Noa and USS Leonard F. Mason (DD-852) recovered astronauts and launch capsules.

Glenn signing autographs on the Noa after recovery, and FRIENDSHIP 7 being taken aboard the destroyer. Photos: NHHC NHF-016.01 and NASA

The famous photograph of Glenn maxing and relaxing with aviator shades and Chuck Taylors was snapped on Noa’s deck before he was transferred to the carrier USS Randolph (CV-15), which was the primary recovery ship.

Surely channeling the same spirit of the Winged Spinach Can (Photo: NASA) https://www.nasa.gov/multimedia/imagegallery/image_feature_534.html

A Veteran’s organization to both Noa I and Noa II is maintained.

Epilogue

The original Clemson-class Noa is remembered by a 1/400 scale model by Mirage Hobby, depicted with her XSOC-1 embarked.

As for her sisters, seven Clemson’s were lost at the disaster at Honda Point in 1923, and 18 (including six used by the British) were lost in WWII including one, USS Stewart (DD-224), which was famously raised by the Japanese and used in their Navy only to be recaptured by the USN and given a watery grave after the war.

Those four-pipers not sold off in the 1930s or otherwise sent to Davy Jones were scrapped wholesale in the months immediately after WWII. Sister USS Hatfield (DD-231) decommissioned 13 December 1946 and was sold for scrap 9 May 1947 to NASSCO, the last of her kind in the Navy.

The final Clemson afloat, USS Aulick (DD-258), joined the Royal Navy as HMS Burnham (H82) in 1940 as part of the “Destroyers for Bases” deal. Laid up in 1944, she was allocated for scrapping on 3 December 1948.

None are preserved and only the scattered wrecks in the Western Pacific, Honda Point, the Med and Atlantic endure.

For more information on the Clemsons and their like, read CDR John Alden’s book, “Flush Decks and Four Pipes” and/or check out the Destroyer History Foundation’s section on Flushdeckers. 

As for the late Loveman Noa, while Uncle does not have a vessel on the current Naval List in his honor, he is remembered by a circa 1910 memorial tablet at Annapolis and is enshrined in Memorial Hall, one of six members of the Class of 1900 so recorded. His descendants apparently also have a memorial of their own to the young Mid who breathed his last on a beach in Samar.

And, of course, aircraft operations are standard on U.S. Navy destroyers today and have been since the FRAM’d Gearing and Sumner-class destroyers of the 1950s/60s, with their dedicated DASH drones, and the full-on helicopter decks of the follow-on Belknap-class destroyer leaders.

Then came the Spru-cans.

Photo taken by Bath Iron Works as USS HAYLER left Portland, ME on sea trials in the Gulf of Maine May 1992 after she had received the vertical launching system, SQQ-89 ASW system with towed array sonar, enlarged hangar and RAST and upgrades SLQ-32 and CIWS. Via Navsource

And today’s Burkes.

200304-N-NK931-1001 PHILIPPINE SEA (Mar. 4 2020) Landing Signalmen Enlisted (LSE), assigned to the Arleigh-Burke class guided-missile destroyer USS Barry (DDG 52), directs night flight operations of an MH-60 Sea Hawk helicopter, assigned to the “Saberhawks” of Helicopter Maritime Strike Squadron (HSM) 77, during the U.S.-Japan Bilateral Advanced Warfighting Training exercise (BAWT). (U.S. Navy photo by Ensign Samuel Hardgrove)

Specs:

Noa, April 1940, via Blueprints.com

Displacement:
1,215 tons (normal)
1,308 tons (full load)
Length: 314 ft. 4.5 in
Beam: 30 ft. 11.5 in
Draft: 9 ft. 4 in
Propulsion:
4 × boilers, 300 psi (2,100 kPa) saturated steam
2 geared steam turbines
27,600 hp (20,600 kW)
2 shafts
Speed: 35.5 knots
Range: 4,900 nmi (9,100 km) @ 15 knots
Crew: (USN as commissioned)
8 officers
8 chief petty officers
106 enlisted
Armament:
(1920)
4- 4″/51 cal guns
1 x 3″/23 cal AAA
12 × 21-inch torpedo tubes (4 × 3) (533 mm)

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