Tag Archives: USS Kidd (DD-661)

The best preserved Fletcher heads back to the water

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The “Pirate of the Pacific,” the Fletcher-class destroyer USS Kidd (DD-661) was launched into the waters off Kearny, New Jersey, on a cold February morning in 1943, then, commissioned just two months later, received four battle stars for World War II service and four battle stars for Korean service.

Used as a Naval Reserve training ship during the Cold War, she saw her last drydocking for hull maintenance in 1962 and was shortly afterward decommissioned to spend nearly two decades on red lead row in Philadelphia.

Disposed of by museum donation in 1982, she has since then been a fixture in Baton Rouge on the Mississippi River, where the destroyer, still largely in her 1945 layout, served as a set for Greyhound and other films.

That was until April 2024, when she was removed from her cradle and then sent for her first full overhaul in drydock in 62 years.

A story in pictures, via the USS Kidd Veterans Museum:

As detailed by the Museum:

For the first time in over 60 years, the USS Kidd has received a full overhaul in drydock. She was removed from her berth in Baton Rouge in April 2024 and towed to the Thoma-Sea Marine Constructors (TMC) shipyard in Houma, LA, for this once-in-a-generation work. Over the past 14 months, the deteriorated steel in the ship was removed and replaced with new steel so that she can survive another 40-60 years as one of the State’s top attractions.  The shipyard’s work is now complete, and the ship is scheduled to be released from her drydock berth on November 11th. USS Kidd’s newly refurbished and repaired hull will therefore be entering the water for the first time on this year’s Veterans Day.

Pirate Greyhound Hull Comparisons

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In something fairly unique in military history, two destroyers with the same name are out of the water in drydock at the same time– and both are authorized to fly Jolly Rogers.

Probably the best-preserved WWII-era Fletcher class destroyer USS Kidd (DD-661) which served from 1943 to 1964 and has been a museum ship in Baton Rouge since 1983, traveled last August to TMC shipyard in Houma for a once-in-a-generation overhaul. Earning eight battle stars for WWII and four in Korea, Kidd’s last dry dock overhaul was in 1962, so this is important for her.

Meanwhile, the Flight IIA Burke-class destroyer USS Kidd (DDG-100) just entered drydock at Vigor Marine in Seattle as part of her mid-life DDG MOD upgrade process, having commissioned at Ingalls in 2005.

Both are legends under black banners, the “Pirate of the Pacific.”

Museum Tin Can Upgrades

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We’ll always cover museum ships here on the blog and a pair of preserved greyhounds have some important recent updates.

First, the USS Kidd (DD-661)— one of just three Fletchers on display in the U.S. and by far the one that is in the most “WWII correct” condition– closed to the public on 24 April as she left her Baton Rouge berth along the banks of the Mississippi for the first time since 1982, bound for the Thoma-Sea Marine Constructors (TMC) shipyard in Houma, Louisiana, for her first major dry dock preservation project since leaving Navy custody.

Second, to honor the famed USS Samuel B. Roberts (DE-413), the destroyer escort that “fought like a battleship” and heroically charged the Japanese fleet with the destroyers of Taffy 3, the only member of her class preserved in America, USS Stewart (DE-238), has recently been repainted in a WWII camo scheme that approximates Measure 32.

As noted by the Galveston Naval Museum:

We are painting the USS Stewart in Sammy B’s camouflage pattern in honor of the 80th Anniversary of the Battle off Samar. Our mission is to tell the story. There are no other DEs that can render such a tangible honor to one of the greatest fighting ships in American history. Our goal is to ensure that American schoolchildren will know the name Samuel B Roberts, and why America is a Nation worth fighting for.

One Fine Greyhound

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Via the USS Kid Veterans Museum:

USS KIDD (DD-661) at rest in her cradle in downtown Baton Rouge, LA, USA, where she now serves as a museum — August 2021 (Photo copyright Hunter Svetanics; used by permission)

Note her five 5″/38 singles, 14 Bofors, 12 Oerlikons, five-pack of 21-inch torpedo tubes, stern depth charge racks, and 6 K-gun depth charge projectors– the same armament layout she had in August 1945. 

An early Fletcher-class destroyer named after RADM Isaac C. Kidd, who perished on the bridge of USS Arizona on December 7th, the “Pirate of the Pacific” earned 12 battlestars in WWII then continued her service in the Korean conflict and the Cold War. Her buccaneer moniker came from a giant figure of the famed privateer captain on her stack. Destroyer nose art, if you will. 
 

80-G-202517: “USS Kidd (DD-661), with an elaborate figure of the famous pirate captain painted on the smokestack, the destroyer keeps a fighting name sailing the high seas.”

After languishing on red lead row for almost two decades, she was one of three Fletcher-class tin cans set aside by the Navy– but the only one left largely in her WWII configuration (i.e., not FRAM’d)– and has been a museum in Baton Rouge since 1982. 
 

USS Kidd (DD-661) underway at the time she was recommissioned for Korean War service, circa March 1951. This image was received by the Naval Photographic Center in December 1959, but was taken much earlier. Note that the ship still carries World War II vintage radar antennas and is otherwise fitted as she was in mid-1945. Official U.S. Navy Photograph, from the collections of the Naval History and Heritage Command. Photo #: NH 107198.

 
She is so well preserved that she served for the topside footage of the fictional USS Keeling in the recent Tom Hanks film, Greyhound, which is sadly trapped on AppleTV.