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The second GRIDLEY class destroyer was the second
single-stacker of a Bethlehem Shipbuilding Company design to be laid
down under the Navy's rearmament program. She was to be launched at
Bethlehem's Quincy (MA) yard on February 25, 1937 and commissioned in
September of the same year. After training in the Caribbean and along
the East Coast, DD-382 proceeded to her first major assignment as a part
of the Battle Force.
USS CRAVEN was named for CDR Tunis Augustus Macdonough
Craven. CDR Craven, as skipper of USS TECUMSEH, a single-turret monitor
during the Civil War, led Commodore David Glasgow Farragut's attack
force into Mobile Bay. In an effort to better engage the Confederate
ironclad ram CSS TENNESSEE, Craven ordered the monitor out of the ship
channel. The warship struck a mine (called a torpedo in Civil War
terminology). As the monitor settled, Craven allowed his pilot to
precede him through the narrow escape hatch in the turret roof. Craven
was lost.
USS CRAVEN served most of her pre-World War II duty
with the battle fleet, receiving commendations for her expertise in the
anti-submarine role while screening the fleet's carriers.
When the Japanese attacked Pearl Harbor, DD-382 was
serving as part of the destroyer screen for USS ENTERPRISE (CV-6). The
carrier had just delivered aircraft to the Marines on Wake Island and
was, fortunately hours away from the Hawaiian Islands when the raiders
struck.
USS CRAVEN was literally in the midst of the major
actions in the South Pacific for the next several months. She screened
transports carrying troops to Guadalcanal for nine months, then to be
withdrawn to support a successful sweep through Vella Gulf that sent
three Japanese destroyers to the bottom and severely damaged a cruiser.
An all-too-brief refit at the end of 1943 brought the destroyer back to
the States.
By January 1944, CRAVEN was back in the role she knew
best, serving as screen for the Pacific Fleet's fast carrier forces in
their frequent raids on Japanese island fortresses. Her service record
read like a litany of Pacific operations; Wotje, Eniwetok, the Marshals,
Guam, Saipan, Palau, Yap, and dozens of others were visited by forces
under DD-382's protection. As air attacks began to take the form of
kamikaze missions, CRAVEN's anti-aircraft battery was judged too weak to
allow her a more than even chance of survival. With little reserve
buoyancy, DD-382's armament could not be adequately reinforced, so she
was shifted to the Atlantic fleet to combat Hitler's U-boats.
CRAVEN spent the last year of the war on
anti-submarine patrol off the East Coast. Her service also led her first
to serve as a convoy escort to Southampton, England. She then delivered
the U.S. Minister to Tangier. She would spend the next several months in
the Mediterranean. Recalled to the United States in 1946, she would
ultimately return to San Diego to be decommissioned. She left government
service on October 2, 1947, when she was sold.
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