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Here at LSOZI, we are going to take off every Wednesday for a look at the old steam/diesel navies of the 1859-1946 time period and will profile a different ship each week. These ships have a life, a tale all of their own, which sometimes takes them to the strangest places. – Christopher Eger

Warship Wednesday March 4, 2015: The Endangered D.C. Destroyer

Here we see the Forrest Sherman-class destroyer USS Barry (DD-933) in a beautiful shot of a breakaway after refueling as provided by Jim Buttleman via Navsource.

Following World War II, the U.S. Navy had literally hundreds of very advanced Fletcher, Gearing, and Sumner-class destroyers in the fleet. In fact, many of these ships to include most of the Fletchers, were in mothballs or part-time NRF service. However, by the 1950s the Big Blue was looking for some more advanced tin cans to carry forth fleet operations and help screen the new breed of super-carriers. Four giant 490-foot Mitscher-class destroyers were completed during the Korean conflict era but the Navy thought they were too big. A smaller design, just a bit larger than the WWII Gearings but with more modern equipment was then designed– the Forest Sherman class.

Class leader DD-931 was ordered March 1951 from Bath and was the first of some 18 sisters. These 418-foot long, 4,000-ton full load greyhounds used GE steam turbines and Foster-Wheeler boilers to generate over 32.5-knots at max speed. Equipped with the a trio of the new 5″/54 caliber Mark 42 guns, they could shoot further (26,000 yards) and faster (40-rounds per minute per mount) than other destroyers in the fleet armed with the legacy 5″/38 cal guns. A quartet of 3 inch (76 mm) 50-caliber Mark 33 AAA guns were mounted instead of the previous generations Bofors and Oerlikons and the ships carried both 21-inch anti-surface torpedo tubes and Hedgehog ASW weapons.

The third ship of the class was named after “The Father of the American Navy,” Commodore John Barry. Barry, an American by way of County Wexford Ireland, was a bible-thumping catholic who commanded the early Continental and later United States Ships Delaware, Lexington, Raleigh, and Alliance in a series of combats during the War of Independence after receiving a commission signed by John Hancock. In 1797, at age 52, he received Commission #1 in the U.S. Navy at the hand of George Washington. Fittingly, Barry died while on active duty in 1803. DD-933 was named not only after this venerated gentleman of the sea but in honor of a Clemson-class destroyer, DD-248/APD-29 that was sunk by kamikazes 21 June 1945.

USS Barry (DD-933) was ordered 15 December 1952 and built alongside several of her classmates at Bath in Maine, commissioning on 7 September 1956.

She soon was deployed far and wide, conducting port calls with the fleet in South America and Europe before a refit in 1959 that saw her Mk. 25 torpedo tubes removed, new Mk.32 ASW tubes installed, and an advanced SQS-23 sonar fitted.

This made her one of the most advanced platforms in the Atlantic Fleet when the Cuban Missile Crisis kicked off.

Barry lived through that terror-inducing operation, making her own footnote in history when she investigated the Soviet-flagged merchantman Metallurg Anosov, coming close enough to photograph deck cargo. She also kept tabs on C-19, a Soviet Foxtrot-class diesel sub.

Following Cuban service, she led DesRon 24 to Vietnam. There in Southeast Asian waters she spent much of 1965-66 on plane duty watching for crashed naval aviators and alternated this with coastal naval gunfire support of Marine, 1st Cav and ARVN units ashore. Barry fired more than 2200 5-inch shells into Viet Cong and NVA positions with the aid of spotters, receiving two battle stars for her service.

In 1967, another refit saw her ditch a 5-inch mount for a new-fangled ASROC launcher as well as new electronics. The MK-112 “Matchbox” launcher held eight 1100-pound RUR-5 Anti-Submarine Rockets each with a Mk.46 torpedo or a W44 Nuclear depth bomb attached. A below-deck magazine, in the same compartment that held 600 5-inch shells for the mount, was replaced by magazine for another 8 rockets.

Barry then changing her homeport to Athens, Greece. There she had a ringside seat for another Red Banner Fleet v. U.S. Navy standoff in 1973 when the Soviets came eyeball to eyeball in the Med with NATO forces during the Yom Kippur War.

Moving back to CONUS with a homeport in Boston, Barry saw a yearlong overhaul that ended March 1981 that included, among other improvements, the ability for her ASROC to fire Harpoon anti-ship missiles.

Although fresh and ready, she and her sisters were rapidly retired in the early 1980s to make room on the Naval List for the new Spruance-class destroyers. On 5 November 1982, Barry was decommissioned just 19 months after refit and towed to Philly’s red lead row where she was stricken January 31, 1983.

By the end of 1983, 16 of her sisters were mothballed with only USS Edson (DD-946) remaining active until 1988.

Barry, in large part due to her recently reconditioned appearance and storage close to the nation’s capital, was given a reprieve from the scrappers and towed to Washington Navy Yard in May 1983. Used as a floating museum ship maintained by the Navy, she has been used for hundreds of change of command, retirement, and re-enlistment ceremonies for maritime personnel in the D.C. area for the past 32 years.

Open to the public nine months a year, she sees over 9,000 civilian visitors to the Navy Museum annually.

If you do the math on that, more than a quarter million people have walked her decks as a museum ship since the Reagan-era while her decks and bridge have been the setting for film and TV series. Her ASROC magazine is now a vistor’s center.

Every Halloween for the past several years she turned into “Ghost Ship Barry” for the sake of the kids.

Now, with the new Frederick Douglass Memorial Bridge being built, the ship would be trapped in the Anacostia River after October 2015, and in response, the Navy intends to tow the 59-year old destroyer out of the capitol and dismantle her.

Even when Barry takes her final cruise to the scrappers, her name will live on in the fleet in USS Barry (DDG-52), an Arleigh Burke-class guided missile destroyer, commissioned in 1992.

Of DD-933‘s sisters, 9 were sunk is training exercises in the 1990s, 6 have been sold for scrap (including Forrest Sherman herself last December), and two, USS Turner Joy (DD-951), and Edson, are currently saved as museum ships in Bremerton, Washington and at Bay City, Michigan respectively.

Specs

Displacement: 4050 tons
Length:     418 ft 6 in (128 m)
Beam:     45 ft (13.7 m)
Draught:     19 ft 6 in (5.9 m)
Propulsion:     70,000 shp (52.2 MW); Geared turbines, two propellers
Speed:     33 knots (61 km/h)
Range:     4500 nautical miles (8,300 km)
Complement:    337
Armament:     (in 1956)
3 × 5 in (127 mm)/54,
2 × 3 in (76 mm)/50 twin mounts,
2 × ASW hedgehogs (Mk 11),
4 × 21 in (533 mm) Mk 25 torpedo tubes

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